A  DAV  WITH  A  TRAMP 
AND  OTHER  DAYS 

WALTER  'A  ^  WYCKOFF 


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A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 


A  DAY  WITH  A 
TRAMP 

AND  OTHER  DAYS 


WALTEE  A.  WYOKOFF 

j'l' 

ASSISTANT  PR0FES80B  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  IN  PKINCBTON 

cniybbsity;  author  OF  "thjs  WOBKEBS" 


^^^^ 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1901 


7,  J  9  J 


COFTKIGHT,   1901,  BY 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

PUBLIgHED  SEFTKUBEB,  1901 


TROW  OmiCTOIIT 

PWITTIN*  AND  BOOKBINOINQ  COMPANT 

NEW  rORK 


PREFACE 

The  following  narratives,  like  those  pub- 
lished in  the  series  of  "  The  Workers,"  East 
and  West,  are  drawn  from  notes  taken  during 
an  expedition  made  ten  years  ago.  In  the 
summer  of  1891  I  began  an  experiment  of 
earning  my  living  as  a  day  laborer  and  con- 
tinued it  until,  in  the  course  of  eighteen 
months,  I  had  worked  my  way  from  Connect- 
icut to  California. 

In  justice  to  the  narratives  it  should  be 
explained  that  they  are  submitted  simply  for 
what  they  are,  the  casual  observations  of  a 
student  almost  fresh  from  college  whose  inter- 
est in  life  led  him  to  undertake  a  work  for 
which  he  had  no  scientific  training. 

W.  A.  W. 

Princeton,  October,  1901. 


CONTENTS 

PAeB 

A  Day  with  a  Tramp  .        .        •       .        .      1 

With  Iowa  Farmers 41 

A  Skction-Hand   on  thb  Union  Pacific 
Railway   . 91 

♦♦A  Burro-Puncher" 127 

Incidents  op  the  Slums       .       .        .        .163 


A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 


A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 

HE  was  an  American  of  Irish  stock;  his 
name  was  Farrell;  he  was  two-and- 
twenty,  a  little  more  than  six  feet  high,  and 
as  straight  as  an  arrow.  We  met  on  the  line 
of  the  Rock  Island  Railway  just  west  of 
Morris,  111. 

But  first,  I  should  like  to  explain  that  in 
the  course  of  eighteen  months'  experience  as 
a  wandering  wage-earner,  drifting  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  this  was  the  only  day 
that  I  spent  in  company  with  a  tramp. 

It  was  in  the  character  of  a  workingman  and 
not  as  a  tramp,  that  I  began,  in  the  summer 
of  1891,  a  casual  experiment,  by  which  I 
hoped  to  gain  some  personal  acquaintance  with 
the  conditions  of  life  of  unskilled  laborers  in 
America.  Having  no  skill,  I  could  count  on 
employment  only  in  the  rudest  forms  of  labor, 


4  A  DAY   WITH   A  TRAMP 

and  I  maintained  consistently  the  character  of 
a  laborer — a  very  indifferent  one,  I  am  bound 
to  own — yet  finding  it  possible  everywhere  to 
live  by  the  work  of  my  hands. 

I  did  tramp,  it  is  true,  walking  in  all  some 
twenty-five  hundred  miles  of  the  distance  from 
Connecticut  to  California;  but  I  did  it  from 
set  purpose,  discovering  that  in  this  way  I 
could  get  a  better  knowledge  of  the  people  and 
the  country  and  of  opportunities  for  work, 
than  if  I  should  spend  my  savings  in  car-fare 
from  place  to  place.  It  cost  me  nothing  to 
walk,  and  I  not  infrequently  covered  two  hun- 
dred miles  in  the  course  of  a  week,  but  it  gen- 
erally proved  that,  in  actual  cash  from  the  sav- 
ings of  my  last  job,  I  was  out  quite  as  much  as 
I  should  have  been  had  I  ridden  the  distance. 
This  was  because  it  was  often  necessary  to  pay 
for  food  and  lodging  by  the  way,  an  odd  job 
not  always  being  procurable,  and  the  people 
being  far  readier  to  give  a  meal  than  to  take 
the  trouble  of  providing  work  in  payment  for 
it.  I  could  little  blame  them,  and  I  soon 
began  to  make  use  of  the  wayside  inns,  trust- 
ing for  contact  with  people  more  to  chance 


A  DAT  WITH  A  TRAMP  0 

acquaintance  and  the  admirable  opportunities 
that  came  with  every  event  of  employment, 
when  my  savings  were  gone. 

Tramp  is  a  misnomer,  I  fancy,  as  descrip- 
tive of  the  mode  of  motion  of  the  members  of 
the  professionally  idle  class  which  in  our  ver- 
nacular we  call  hoboes.  The  tramp  rarely 
tramps;  he  "  beats  his  way "  on  the  rail- 
roads. 

Everyone  knows  of  the  very  thorough-going 
and  valuable  work  that  Mr.  Josiah  Flynt  has 
done  in  learning  the  vagrant  world,  not  only 
of  America,  but  of  England,  and  widely  over 
the  Continent  as  well,  and  the  light  that  he 
has  let  in  upon  the  habits  of  life  and  of  thought 
of  the  fraternity,  and  its  common  speech  and 
symbols,  and  whence  its  recruits  come,  and 
why,  and  how  it  occupies  a  world  midway 
between  lawlessness  and  honest  toil,  lacking 
the  criminal  wit  for  the  one  and  the  will  power 
for  the  other. 

That  the  hobo,  in  going  from  place  to  place, 
makes  little  use  of  the  highways,  I  can  freely 
testify,  so  far  as  my  limited  experience  goes. 
His  name  was  legion  among  the  unemployed 


6  A   DAY   WITH   A  TllAMP 

in  Chicago,  and  he  flocked  about  railway 
centres,  but  he  was  a  rare  bird  along  the 
country  roads  where  work  was  plentiful. 

It  is  easy  to  recount  individually  all  that  I 
met:  a  lusty  Yankee  beggar  who  hailed  me 
as  a  brother  one  blistering  July  day,  not  far 
from  the  Connecticut  border,  when  I  was 
making  for  Garrisons;  a  cynical  wraith,  who 
rose,  seemingly,  from  the  dust  of  the  road,  in 
the  warm  twilight  of  a  September  evening,  in 
eastern  Pennsylvania  and  scoffed  at  my  hope 
of  finding  work  in  Sweet  Valley;  a  threadbare, 
white-haired  German  with  a  truly  fine  reserve 
and  courtesy,  who  so  far  warmed  to  me,  when 
we  met  in  the  frosty  air  of  late  November,  on 
the  bare,  level  stretch  of  a  country  road  be- 
tween Cleveland  and  Sandusky,  as  to  tell  me 
that  he  had  walked  from  Texas,  and  was  on 
his  way  to  the  home  of  friends  near  Boston; 
then  Farrell,  in  central  Ilhnois;  and  finally,  a 
blear-eyed,  shaggy  knave,  trudging  the  sleep- 
ers of  the  Union  Pacific  in  western  Nebraska, 
his  rags  bound  together  and  bound  on  with 
strings,  and  a  rollicking  quality  in  his  cracked 
voice,  who  must  have  had  difficulty  in  avoid- 


A   DAY    WITH   A   TRAMP  7 

ing  work  among  the  short-handed  gangs  of 
navvies  along  the  line. 

All  this  is  by  way  of  fruitless  explanation 
that  I  myself  was  not  a  tramp,  but  a  work- 
man, living  by  day's  labor;  a  fruitless  explana- 
tion, because  a  reputation  once  established  is 
difficult  to  dislodge.  I  have  grown  accus- 
tomed to  references  to  my  "  tramp  days,"  even 
among  those  who  knew  my  purpose  best,  and  I 
had  no  sooner  returned  to  my  university  than 
I  found  that  to  its  members  I  was  already 
known  as  "  Weary,"  in  which  alliterative  ap- 
pellation I  saw  the  frankest  allusion  to  a  sup- 
posed identification  with  the  "  Weary  Wil- 
lies "  of  our  "  comic  "  prints.  And  having 
incurred  the  name,  I  may  as  well  lay  bare 
the  one  day  that  I  tramped  with  a  tramp. 

I  am  not  without  misgivings  in  speaking 
of  Farrell  as  a  tramp.  He  had  held  a  steady 
job  some  weeks  before,  and  our  day  together 
ended  as  we  shall  see;  but  if  I  was  a  hobo,  so 
was  he,  and  although  clearly  not  of  the  strict- 
est sect,  and  perhaps  of  no  true  sect  at  all,  yet 
let  us  grant  that,  for  the  time,  we  both  were 
tramps. 


8  A  DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

The  line  of  a  railway  was  an  unusual  course, 
for  I  much  preferred  the  country  roads  as 
offering  better  walking,  and  far  more  hope  of 
meeting  the  people  that  I  wished  to  know. 
Heavy  rains,  however,  had  made  the  roads 
almost  impassable  on  foot,  and  I  was  walking 
the  sleepers  from  necessity. 

The  spring  of  1892  had  been  uncommonly 
wet.  The  rains  set  in  about  the  time  that  I 
quit  work  with  a  gang  of  roadmakers  on  the 
Exposition  grounds.  So  incessant  were  they 
that  it  grew  difficult  to  leave  Chicago  on  foot, 
and  when,  in  the  middle  of  May,  I  did  set  out, 
I  got  only  as  far  as  Joliet,  when  I  had  to  seek 
employment  again. 

At  the  yards  of  the  Illinois  Steel  Coippany 
I  was  taken  on  and  assigned  to  a  gang  of  labor- 
ers, mostly  Hungarians.  But  my  chief  asso- 
ciation of  a  week's  stay  there  is  with  a  board- 
ing-house, and  especially  its  landlady. 

She  was  a  girlish  matron,  with  a  face  that 
made  you  thing  of  a  child-wife,  but  she  was  a 
woman  in  capacity.  Her  baby  was  a  year  old, 
and  generous  Heaven  was  about  to  send  an- 
other.    Her  boarders  numbered  seven  when 


A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP  9 

I  was  made  welcome;  and  to  help  her  in  the 
care  of  a  crippled  husband  and  the  child  and 
guests,  she  had  a  little  maid  of  about  fifteen, 
while,  to  add  to  the  income  from  our  board, 
she  took  in  all  our  washing,  and  did  it  herself 
with  no  outside  help.  She  may  have  been 
twenty,  but  I  should  have  guessed  eighteen, 
and  every  man  of  us  stood  straight  before  her 
and  did  her  bidding  thankfully. 

It  was  a  proud  moment,  and  one  which 
made  me  feel  more  nearly  on  equal  terms  with 
the  other  men,  when  one  evening  she  came  to 
me  and, 

"  John,  you  mind  the  baby  this  time  while 
I  finish  getting  supper,"  she  said,  as  she  put 
the  child  in  my  arms. 

On  the  sofa  in  the  sitting-room  we  would 
lay  the  little  wide-eyed,  sunny  creature  whom 
we  rarely  heard  cry,  and  who  never  showed 
fear  at  the  touch  of  our  rough  hands,  nor  at 
the  thundering  laughter  that  answered  to  her 
smiles  and  her  gurgling  attempts  at  speech. 

The  mother  waited  at  the  table,  and  joined 
freely  in  our  talk.  She  had  a  way  of  saying 
"  By  gosh!  "  that  fairly  broke  your  heart,  and 


10  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

at  times  she  would  stand  still  and  swear  softly, 
while  her  deep  blue  eyes  widened  in  innocent 
surprise. 

They  were  haunting  eyes,  and  they  followed 
me  far  out  on  the  rain-soaked  roads  of  the 
valley  of  the  Illinois.  The  walking  was  not 
bad  at  first.  Over  a  rolling  country  the  way 
wound  past  woodland  and  open  fields,  between 
banks  of  rank  turf  and  wild  flowers;  and,  but 
for  the  evident  richness  of  soil,  and  the  entire 
absence  of  rock,  it  might  have  been  a  New 
England  valley  with  nothing  to  suggest  the 
earlier  monotony  of  undulating  prairie. 

But  the  walking  became  steadily  worse, 
until  by  nightfall  each  step  was  a  painful 
pulling  of  a  foot  out  of  the  mire  then  plant- 
ing it  in  the  mire  ahead,  with  Morris  a  good 
ten  miles  beyond.  I  was  passing  in  the  late 
twilight  a  farm-house  that  stood  close  to  the 
road.  In  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  seated  in  a 
tilted  chair  on  the  porch,  was  a  young  farmer 
with  a  group  of  lightly  clad  children  about 
him.  He  accepted  the  explanation  that  I 
found  the  walking  too  heavy  to  admit  of  my 
reaching  Morris  that  evening,  and,  readily  giv- 


A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP  11 

ing  me  leave  to  sleep  on  his  hay-mow,  asked 
me  in  to  have  something  to  eat. 

I  was  struck  at  first  sight  with  a  marked 
resemblance  in  him  to  my  friend  Fitz- Adams, 
the  manager  of  the  logging  camp  in  Penn- 
sylvania. All  through  our  talk,  while  seated 
on  the  porch  in  the  evening,  there  were  re- 
minders in  his  manner  and  turns  of  speech 
and  ways  of  looking  at  things  of  that  very  effi- 
cient boss. 

He  was  living  in  apparent  poverty.  The 
house  was  small  and  slightly  built  and  meanly 
furnished.  Indeed,  there  was  an  effect  of 
squalor  in  its  scant  interior,  and  in  the  un- 
kempt appearance  of  his  wife  and  children. 
But  the  man  impressed  you  with  the  resolute 
reserve  of  one  who  bides  his  time  and  knows 
what  he  is  about.  It  appeared  in  his  evident 
contentment,  joined  with  a  certain  hopeful- 
ness that  was  very  engaging.  It  is  true  that 
the  spring  was  wet,  so  wet  that  he  had  not  yet 
been  able  to  plant  his  com,  and  it  was  growing 
late  for  planting,  but,  even  if  the  crop  should 
fail  completely,  he  had  much  com  in  the  best 
condition,  he  said,  left  over  from  the  imcom- 


12  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

monly  large  crop  of  the  year  before,  which 
would  be  selling  in  the  autumn  at  a  better 
price.  He  was  depressed  by  the  persistent 
rains,  but  not  discouraged,  and,  as  for  the 
region  in  which  he  had  cast  his  lot,  he  clearly 
thought  it  one  of  the  best  for  a  man  beginning 
the  world  as  a  farmer.  With  land  at  fifty 
dollars  an  acre,  there  was  a  good  market  near 
at  hand,  and  money  on  the  security  of  the  land 
could  be  had  at  five  per  cent.  It  was  best  to 
buy,  he  said.  Four  thousand  dollars  would 
secure  a  farm  of  eighty  acres,  and  two  hundred 
dollars  would  pay  the  interest,  whereas  the 
rental  might  reach  three  hundred  or  even  three 
hundred  and  fifty.  Unmistakably  he  was 
poor,  but  he  was  certainly  not  of  the  complain- 
ing sort,  and  I  thought  that  it  did  not  require 
a  long  look  into  the  future  to  see  him  in  full 
possession  of  the  land  and  the  owner  of  a  more 
comfortable  home  besides. 

When  the  barn-yard  fowls  wakened  me  in 
the  morning  the  sun  was  rising  to  a  cloudless 
dawn.  But,  by  the  time  that  I  took  to  the 
road,  all  the  sky  was  overcast  again,  and  prog- 
ress was  as  difficult  as  on  the  night  before. 


A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP  13 

The  stoneless  soil  was  saturated,  until  it  could 
absorb  not  another  drop,  and  water  formed  a 
pool  in  every  foot-print  and  ran  in  muddy 
streams  in  the  wheel-tracks. 

Two  miles  down  the  road  was  a  railway.  I 
reached  it  after  an  hour's  hard  walk  and  fol- 
lowed it  to  the  tow-path  of  a  canal,  which 
afforded  comparatively  firm  footing  over  the 
remaining  eight  miles  into  Morris.  It  was 
now  ten  o'clock,  and  for  the  past  hour  a  steady 
drizzle  had  been  falling,  which  increased  to  a 
down-pour  as  I  entered  the  town.  There  I 
remained  sheltered  until  nearly  noon,  when 
the  rain  ceased  and  I  renewed  the  journey. 
The  roads  I  knew  by  experience  to  be  almost 
impassable,  so  I  found  the  line  of  the  Rock 
Island  Railway  and  started  west  in  the  hope 
of  reaching  Ottawa  by  night. 

Dense  clouds  lay  heavily  upon  the  fields  that 
stood,  many  of  them,  deep  in  water.  The 
moist  air  was  hot  and  sluggish,  but  under  foot 
was  the  hard  road-bed,  and  the  course  was  the 
straightest  that  could  be  cut  to  the  Mississippi. 
The  line  was  a  double  one,  and  the  gutter 
between  formed  a  good  cinder-track,  so  that  I 


14  A   DAT  WITH  A  TRAMP 

had  not  to  measure  the  distance  from  sleeper 
to  sleeper  at  every  step,  which  grows  to  be  a 
horrible  monotony. 

I  had  cleared  the  town  by  two  miles  or  more 
and  was  settling  to  the  swing  of  a  long  walk 
when  I  saw,  not  far  ahead,  a  gang  of  navvies 
at  work;  almost  at  the  same  moment  there  ap- 
peared, emerging  from  the  fog  beyond,  the 
figure  of  a  man.  We  were  about  equally  dis- 
tant from  the  gang,  and  I  had  passed  the 
workmen  only  a  few  yards  when  we  met. 
The  impression  grew  as  he  drew  near  that  here 
was  a  typical  tramp,  and,  being  unaccustomed 
to  his  order  and  its  ways,  I  wondered  how  we 
should  fare,  if  thrown  together.  But  if  I  rec- 
ognized him  as  a  tramp,  he  had  done  as  much 
by  me;  for,  when  we  met,  he  hailed  me  as  a 
confrere  with, 

"  Hello,  partner!  which  way?  " 

"  I'm  going  to  Ottawa,"  I  said. 

"  How  long  will  you  hold  Ottaway  down?  " 
he  asked. 

"  Oh,  I'm  only  passing  through  on  my  way 
to  Davenport." 

That  was  enough  for  Farrell  as  evidence  of 


A  DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP  16 

my  being  a  hobo,  however  raw  a  recruit;  but 
there  was  a  certain  courtesy  of  the  road  which 
he  wished  to  maintain,  if  he  could,  in  the  face 
of  my  awkward  ignorance.  I  was  conscious 
of  an  embarrassment  which  I  could  not  under- 
stand. 

"  How  far  is  it  to  Morris?  "  he  asked  next, 
and  the  opening  should  have  been  enough  for 
any  man,  but  I  answered  dully,  with  painful 
accuracy  as  to  the  distance  that  I  had  come. 

Clearly  nothing  would  penetrate  such  dens- 
ity but  the  frankest  directness,  so  out  he 
blurted : 

"  Well,  partner,  if  you  don't  mind,  I'll  go 
with  you." 

Light  dawned  upon  me  then,  and  I  tried  to 
make  up  in  cordiality  for  a  want  of  intuition. 
Embarrassment  was  gone  at  once,  and  with  an 
ease,  as  of  long  acquaintance,  Farrell  began  to 
tell  me  how  that,  on  the  day  before,  he  had 
lost  his  partner  and  for  twenty-four  hours  had 
been  alone.  The  loneliness  was  a  horror  to 
him,  from  which  he  shrunk,  even  in  the  tell- 
ing, and  he  expanded,  in  the  companionship  of 
a  total  stranger,  like  a  flower  in  light  and 
warmth. 


16  A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 

"Without  a  moment's  hesitation  he  aban- 
doned the  way  toward  Morris  and  turned  back 
upon  his  former  course,  with  a  light-hearted- 
ness  at  having  a  partner  that  was  highly  flat- 
tering. 

Here  certainly  was  life  reduced  to  simple 
terms.  As  we  stood  at  meeting  on  the  railway 
line,  Farrell  was  as  though  he  had  no  single 
human  tie  with  a  strong  hold  upon  him.  The 
clothes  that  covered  him  were  his  only  posses- 
sions, and  a  toss  of  a  coin  might  well  determine 
toward  which  point  of  the  compass  he  would 
go.  The  casual  meeting  with  a  new  acquaint- 
tance  was  enough  to  give  direction  to  an  im- 
mediate plan  and  to  change  the  face  of  nature. 

There  was  trouble  in  his  blue  eyes  when  we 
met,  the  fluttering,  anxious  bewilderment  that 
one  sees  in  the  eyes  of  a  half -frightened  child. 
It  was  an  appeal  for  relief  from  intolerable 
loneliness;  all  his  face  brightened  when  we  set 
off  together.  He  had  the  natural  erectness  of 
carriage  which  gives  a  distinction  of  its  own, 
and,  apart  from  a  small,  weak  mouth,  slightly 
tobacco-stained,  and  an  ill-defined  chin,  he  was 
good  to  look  at,  with  his  straight  nose  and  well 


A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP  17 

set  eyes  and  generous  breadth  of  forehead,  the 
thick  brown  hair  turning  gray  about  it  and 
adding  to  his  looks  a  good  ten  years  above  his 
actual  two-and-twenty.  A  faded  coat  was 
upon  his  arm  and  he  wore  a  flannel  shirt  that 
had  once  been  navy  blue,  and  ragged  trousers, 
and  a  pair  of  boots,  through  rents  in  which  his 
bare  feet  appeared.  A  needle  was  stuck 
through  the  front  of  his  shirt,  and  the  soiled 
white  cotton  with  which  it  was  threaded  was 
wound  around  the  cloth  within  the  projecting 
ends. 

However  accustomed  to  "  beating  his  way," 
instead  of  going  on  foot,  Farrell  may  have 
been,  he  was  a  good  walker.  Stretching  far 
ahead  was  the  level  reach  of  the  road-bed,  with 
the  converging  lines  of  rails  disappearing  in 
the  mist.  Our  muscles  relaxed  in  the  hot, 
unmoving  air,  until  we  struck  the  gait  which 
becomes  a  mechanical  swing  with  scarcely  a 
sense  of  effort.  Then  Farrell  was  at  his  best. 
Snatches  of  strange  song  fell  from  him  and 
remembered  fragments  of  stage  dialogue  with 
little  meaning  and  with  no  connection,  but  all 
expressing  his  care-free  mood.     It  was  con- 


18  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

tagious.  Oh,  but  the  world  was  wide  and  fair, 
and  we  were  young  and  free,  and  vagabond 
and  unashamed!  Walt  Whitman  was  our 
poet  then,  but  I  did  not  tell  Farrell  so;  for  the 
new,  raw  wine  of  life  was  in  his  veins,  and  he 
sang  a  song  of  his  own. 

A  breeze  sprang  up  from,Vthe  west,  and  the 
heavy  mists  began  to  move,  but  from  out  the 
east  great  banks  of  clouds  rose  higher  with  the 
sound  of  distant  thunder.  Which  drew  nearer, 
until  spattering  raindrops  fell,  fairly  hissing 
on  the  hot  rails.  No  shelter  was  at  hand; 
when  the  storm  broke  it  came  with  vindictive 
fury  and  drenched  us  in  a  few  moments.  We 
walked  on  with  many  looks  behind  to  make 
sure  of  not  being  run  down,  for  we  could 
scarcely  have  heard  the  approach  of  a  train 
in  the  almost  unbroken  peals  of  thunder  that 
nearly  drowned  our  shouts.  Then  the  shower 
passed;  the  thunder  grew  distant  and  faint 
again,  and  from  a  clear  sky  the  sun  shone  upon 
us  with  blistering  heat,  through  air  as  still  and 
heavy  and  as  surcharged  with  electricity  as 
before  the  storm. 

Farrell  had  been  quite  indifferent  to  the 


A   DAT   WITH   A   TRAMP  Id 

rain,  accepting  it  with  a  philosophic  unconcern 
that  was  perfect.  There  was  certainly  little 
cause  to  complain,  for  in  half  an  hour  our 
clothing  was  dry ;  meantime  the  expression  of 
his  mood  was  changed.  He  had  been  friendly 
before,  but  impersonal;  now  he  wished  to  get 
into  closer  touch. 

"  Where  are  you  from,  partner?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  worked  last  winter  in  Chicago,"  I  said. 

"What  at?" 

"  Trucking  in  a  factory  for  awhile,  then 
with  a  road-gang  on  the  Fair  Grounds.  I  had 
a  job  in  Joliet,  but  I  quit  in  a  week,"  I  con- 
cluded. I  was  short,  for  I  knew  that  this  was 
merely  introductory,  and  that  Farrell  was 
fencing  for  an  opening. 

"  I've  been  on  the  road  seven  weeks  now, 
looking  for  a  job,  and,  in  that  time,  I  ain't 
slept  but  two  nights  in  a  bed,"  he  began. 

"  Two  nights  in  a  bed  out  of  forty-nine?  " 
I  asked. 

"  Yes.  In  that  time  I've  beat  my  way  out 
to  Omaha  and  back  to  Lima  and  up  and  down; 
and  one  night  a  farmer  near  Tifiin,  Ohio,  give 
me  a  supper  and  let  me  sleep  in  a  bed  in  his 


20  A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP 

wagon-house,  and  one  wet  night  in  Chicago  I 
had  the  price  of  a  bunk  in  me  jeans,  and  I  says 
to  meself,  says  I, '  I'd  sooner  sleep  dry  to-night 
than  get  drunk.'  " 

It  came  then  of  itself,  needing  only  an  occa- 
sional prompting  question,  and  the  narrative 
was  essentially  true,  I  fancy;  for,  free  from 
embellishment,  it  moved  with  the  directness  of 
reality. 

Bom  in  Wisconsin  of  parents  who  had  emi- 
grated from  Ireland,  Farrell  was  bred  in  an 
Illinois  village,  about  fifty  miles  north  of 
where  we  were  walking  at  the  time.  His  two 
sisters  lived  there  still,  he  thought,  but  his 
mother  had  died  when  he  was  but  a  lad.  His 
father  was  a  day  laborer  at  work  in  Peoria,  so 
far  as  Farrell  knew.  He  had  not  seen  him  for 
many  years,  and  he  kept  up  no  contact  with 
his  people. 

Much  the  most  interesting  part  of  the  story 
to  me  was  that  which  related  to  the  past  year. 
Farrell  was  twenty-two;  he  had  grown  up  he 
hardly  knew  how,  and  was  already  a  confirmed 
roadster,  with  an  inordinate  love  for  tobacco, 
and  a  well-developed  taste  for  drink. 


A   DAY    WITH   A   TRAMP  21 

In  the  early  summer  he  had  drifted  into 
Ottawa,  the  very  town  that  we  were  nearing, 
and,  being  momentarily  tired  of  the  road,  he 
sought  and  found  a  job  in  a  tile  factory.  At 
this  point  his  narrative  grew  deeply  absorbing, 
because  of  the  unconscious  art  of  it  in  its  sim- 
ple adherence  to  life;  but  being  unable  to 
reproduce  his  words,  I  can  only  suggest  their 
import. 

It  was  a  crisis  in  his  history.     The  change 

began  with  an  experience  of  a  mechanics' 
boarding-house.  He  was  a  vagabond  by 
breeding,  with  no  clearly  defined  ideas  beyond 
food  and  drink,  and  inmaunity  from  work.  He 
was  awaking  to  manhood,  and  there  began  to 
dawn  for  him  at  the  boarding-house  a  sense  of 
home,  and  of  something  more  in  the  motherly 
care  of  the  housekeeper.  i 

"  Say,  she  was  good  to  me,"  was  his  own 
expression,  "  she  done  me  proud.  She  used  to 
mend  me  clothes,  and  if  I  got  drunk,  she  never 
chewed  the  rag,  but  I  see  it  cut  her  bad,  and  I 
swore  off  for  good;  and  then  I  used  to  give  her 
me  wages  to  keep  for  me,  and  she'd  allow  me 
fifty  cents  a  week  above  me  board." 


22  A   DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 

The  picture  went  on  unfolding  itself  nat- 
urally in  the  portrayal  of  interests  undreamed 
of  beyond  idleness,  and  enough  of  plug  and 
beer.  ^The  savings  grew  to  a  little  store;  then 
there  came  the  suggestion  of  a  new  suit  of 
clothes,  and  a  hat  and  boots,  and  a  boiled  shirt 
and  collar,  and  a  bright  cravat.  Farrell  little 
thought  of  the  native  touch  of  art  in  his  de- 
scription of  how,  when  all  these  were  pro- 
cured, he  would  fare  forth  on  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing, not  merely  another  man,  but  other  than 
anything  that  he  had  imagined.  A  sense  of 
achievement  came  and  brought  a  dawning 
feeling  of  obligation,  and  a  desire  to  take 
standing  with  other  men,  and  to  know  some- 
thing and  to  bear  a  part  in  the  work  of  a 
citizen  of  the  town. 

Some  glimmer  had  remained  to  him  of  re- 
ligious teaching  before  his  mother  died,  and, 
in  the  conscious  virtue  of  new  dress,  he  sought 
out  the  church,  and  began  to  go  regularly  to 
mass. 

I  knew  what  was  coming  then;  there  had 
been  an  inevitableness  that  foretold  it  in  the 
tale,  and  I  found  myself  breathing  more  freely 


A   DAY   WITH   A  TRAMP  23 

when  he  began  to  speak  without  self -conscious- 
ness of  the  girl. 

He  said  very  little  of  her,  but  it  was  not  at 
all  difficult  to  catch  the  ampler  meaning  of  his 
words.  Sunday  began  to  hold  a  new  interest, 
quite  apart  from  Sunday  clothes.  He  found 
himself  looking  forward  through  the  week  to 
a  glimpse  of  her  at  church,  but  the  week  was 
far  too  long,  and  in  the  autumn  evenings  he 
would  dress  himself  in  his  best,  regardless  of 
the  jeers  of  the  other  men,  and  would  walk 
past  her  father's  comer  grocery.  Sometimes 
he  saw  her  on  the  pavement  in  front  of  the 
shop,  or  helping  her  father  to  wait  on  custom- 
ers within. 

All  this  was  very  disturbing;  a  new  world 
had  opened  to  him  with  a  steady  job.  It  was 
unfolding  itself  with  quite  wonderful  revela- 
tions in  the  home-life  of  his  boarding-house, 
and  the  friendship  of  the  matron,  and  the  com- 
panionship of  other  workingmen,  and  the  re- 
sponsibility which  was  beginning  to  replace  his 
former  recklessness.  Moreover,  he  was  get- 
ting on  in  the  tile  factory.  He  was  strong 
and  active,  and  the  chances  of  being  trang- 


24  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

ferred  to  piece-work  was  a  spur  to  do  his  best 
at  his  present  unskilled  labor.  Utterly  un- 
foreseen in  its  train  of  consequences  had  come 
into  this  budding  consciousness,  the  vision  of  a 
girl.  He  had  merely  seen  her  at  church,  then 
seen  her  again,  then  found  himseK  looking 
forward  to  sight  of  her,  and  unable  to  wait  pa- 
tiently for  Sunday.  The  very  thought  of  her 
carried  with  it  a  feeling  of  contempt  for  his 
former  life,  and  a  distressing  sense  of  differ- 
ence in  their  present  stations,  which  developed, 
sometimes,  into  the  temptation  to  go  back  to 
the  road  and  forget.  That  was  the  tempta- 
tion that  was  always  in  the  background,  and 
always  coming  to  the  fore  when  the  craving 
for  drink  was  strongest,  or  when  the  monotony 
of  ten  hours'  daily  labor  grew  more  than  com- 
monly burdensome.  For  four  months  and 
more  he  had  resisted  now,  and,  as  a  reward,  he 
had  become  just  man  enough  to  know  feebly 
that  he  could  not  easily  forget,  even  on  the 
road. 

How  he  plucked  up  courage  to  meet  her  I 
do  not  know,  for  he  did  not  tell  me,  and  not 
for  treasure  would  I  have  asked  him  at  this 


A   DAY    WITH   A  TRAMP  25 

point  of  the  story.  He  did  meet  her,  how- 
ever, and  the  wonder  of  it  was  upon  him  still, 
as  he  told  me  modestly,  in  quaint  speech,  that 
she  smiled  upon  him. 

Oh,  ineffable  mystery  of  life,  that  he,  a  hobo 
of  a  few  months  before,  should  be  reading  now 
in  a  good  girl's  eyes  an  answering  liking  to  his 
own !  He  was  little  more  than  a  lad,  and  she 
but  a  slip  of  a  girl,  and  I  do  not  know  what 
it  may  have  meant  to  her,  but  to  him  it  was 
life  from  the  dead.  Very  swiftly  the  winter 
sped  and  very  hard  he  worked  until  he  earned 
a  job  at  piecework  in  the  factory,  and  then 
harder  than  ever  until  he  was  making  good 
wages.  He  could  see  little  of  her,  for  she  had 
an  instinctive  knowledge  of  her  father's  prob- 
able displeasure,  but  there  grew  up  a  tacit 
understanding  between  them  that  kept  his 
hope  and  ambition  fired. 

Nothing  in  experience  could  have  been  more 
wonderful  than  those  winter  months,  when  he 
felt  himself  getting  a  man's  grip  of  things 
unutterable,  that  came  as  from  out  a  boundless 
sea  into  the  range  of  his  strange  awakening. 
And  this  new  life  was  centred  in  her,  as 


26  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

though  she  were  its  source.  He  lived  for  her, 
and  worked  and  thought  for  her  and  tried  to  be 
worthy  of  her,  and  between  his  former  and  his 
present  life  was  a  guK  which  by  some  miracle 
she  had  created. 

It  came  upon  him  with  the  suddenness  of 
a  pistol-shot  one  evening  late  in  March  when 
they  stood  talking  for  a  moment  before  say- 
ing good-night  at  her  father's  door.  Thunder- 
ing down  the  steps  from  the  living  rooms  over 
the  shop  rushed  the  grocer,  a  large,  florid  Irish- 
man. In  a  moment  he  was  upon  them,  hot  in 
the  newly  acquired  knowledge  that  Farrell  was 
"  keeping  steady  company  "  with  his  daugh- 
ter. His  ire  was  up,  and  his  Irish  tongue  was 
loosed,  and  Farrell  got  the  sting  of  it.  It 
lashed  him  for  a  beggarly  factory  laborer  of 
doubtful  birth,  and,  gaining  vehemence,  it 
lashed  him  for  a  hobo  predestined  to  destruc- 
tion, and  finally,  with  strong  admonition,  it 
charged  him  never  to  speak  to  the  girl  and 
never  to  enter  her  home  again. 

H  only  he  could  have  known,  if  only  there 
had  been  a  voice  to  tell  him  convincingly  that 
now  there  had  come  a  crucial  test  in  his  life 


A  DAY   WITH   A  TRAMP  27 

between  character  and  circumstance,  a  voice 
"  to  lift  him  through  the  fight  " !  But  all  his 
past  was  against  him.  In  another  hour  he  was 
dead  drunk  and  he  went  drunk  to  work  in  the 
morning,  and  was  discharged. 

The  pleading  of  his  landlady  was  of  no 
avail.  He  thought  that  he  had  lost  the  girl. 
Nothing  remained  but  the  road,  and  back  to 
the  road  he  would  go,  and  soon,  with  his  sav- 
ings in  his  pocket,  he  was  "  beating  his  way  " 
to  Chicago.  There  he  could  live  on  beer  and 
free  lunches,  and,  at  dives  and  brothels,  he 
would  "  blow  in  "  the  savings  of  ten  months 
and  try  to  forget  how  sacred  the  sum  had 
seemed  to  him,  when,  little  by  little,  he  added 
to  it,  while  planning  for  the  future.  Its  very 
sacredness  gave  a  hellish  zest  to  utter  aban- 
donment to  vice  while  the  money  lasted;  then 
he  took  again  to  begging  on  the  streets  with 
"  a  hard-luck  story,"  until,  in  the  warm  April 
days,  he  felt  the  old  drawing  to  the  open  coun- 
try and  began  once  more  to  "  beat  his  way  "  up 
and  down  the  familiar  railway  lines  and  to  beg 
his  bread  from  the  kind-hearted  folk,  who,  in 
feeding  him,  were  fast  completing  his  ruin. 


28  A   DAT   WITH   A  TRAMP 

We  were  entering  Seneca  now,  and  another 
thunder-storm  was  upon  us,  but,  as  it  broke  in 
a  deluge  of  rain,  we  ran  for  shelter  under  the 
eaves  of  the  railway  station.  A  west-bound 
passenger-train  drew  in  as  we  stood  there. 

"  That's  the  way  to  travel,"  I  heard  Farrell 
say,  half  to  himself.  It  was  the  sheltered  com- 
fort of  the  passengers  that  he  envied,  I  sup- 
posed.    But  not  at  all. 

"  See  that  hobo? "  he  continued,  and,  fol- 
lowing the  line  of  his  outstretched  finger,  I  saw 
a  ragged  wretch  dripping  like  a  drowned  rat 
as  he  walked  slowly  up  and  down  beside  the 
panting  locomotive. 

"  Yes,"  I  answered. 

"  The  train's  got  a  blind  baggage-car  on," 
he  continued.  "  That's  a  car  that  ain't  got 
no  door  in  the  end  that's  next  the  engine. 
You  can  get  on  the  front  platform  when  the 
train  starts,  and  the  brakemen  can't  reach  you 
till  she  stops,  but  then  you're  off  before  they 
are  and  on  again  when  she  starts  up.  The 
fireman  can  reach  you  all  right,  and  if  he's 
ugly,  he'll  heave  coal  at  you,  and  sometimes 
he'll  kick  you  off  when  the  train's  going  full 


A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP  29 

speed;  but  generally  he  lets  you  be.  That 
hobo  come  in  two  hours  from  Chicago  and 
he's  got  a  snap  for  as  long  as  he  wants  to 
ride,"  he  concluded. 

Nevertheless,  I  was  glad  to  see  the  train  go 
without  Farrell's  saying  anything  about  join- 
ing our  adventurous  brother  on  the  fore-plat- 
form of  the  "  blind  baggage-car." 

In  the  seething  sunlight  that  followed  the 
storm  we  left  the  station  and  walked  along  the 
village  street  which  lay  parallel  with  the  rail- 
way. At  a  mineral  spring  we  stopped  to 
drink,  while  a  group  of  school-children  who 
were  loitering  homeward  stood  watching  us, 
the  fascination  in  their  eyes  which  all  children 
feel  in  the  mystery  which  surrounds  the  lives 
of  vagabonds  and  gypsies. 

On  the  outskirts  of  the  village,  when  we 
were  about  to  resume  the  railway,  Farrell  sug- 
gested that  he  should  go  foraging.  He  was 
hungry,  for  he  had  eaten  nothing  since  early 
morning,  while  I  had  bought  food  at  Morris. 
I  promised  to  wait  for  him  and  very  gladly  sat 
down  on  the  curbstone  in  the  shade. 

Two  bare-foot  urchins,  their  trousers  rolled 


so  A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 

up  to  their  knees,  who  had  evidently  been 
watching  us  from  behind  a  picket-fence,  stole 
stealthily  out  of  the  gate  when  Farrell  turned 
the  comer.  Creeping  as  near  as  they  dared, 
they  gathered  a  handful  of  small,  sun-baked 
clods  and  began  to  throw  them  at  me  as  a 
target.  It  was  rare  sport  for  a  time,  but  I  was 
beyond  their  range  and  much  absorbed  in  Far- 
rell's  story.  Disappointed  at  not  having  the 
excitement  of  being  chased  back  to  the  shelter 
of  their  yard,  they  gave  up  the  game  and  seated 
themselves  on  the  curb,  with  their  naked, 
brown  feet  bathed  in  the  pool  which  had 
formed  in  the  gutter.  I  had  become  quite  un- 
conscious of  them,  when  I  suddenly  realized 
that  they  were  in  warm  discussion.  It  was 
about  me,  I  found,  for  I  heard  one  of  them 
raise  his  voice  in  stem  insistence. 

"  ISTaw,"  he  said,  "  that  ain't  the  same  bum, 
that's  another  bum!  " 

Farrell  returned  empty-handed  and  a  trifle 
dejected,  I  thought.  His  mind  was  evidently 
on  food.  A  little  farther  down  the  line  he 
pointed  out  a  farm-house  to  the  right  and  sug- 
gested our  trying  there.     Along  the  edge  of  a 


A  DAY    WITH   A  TRAMP  31 

soft  meadow,  where  the  damp  grass  stood  high, 
nearly  ready  for  mowing,  we  walked  to  a 
muddy  lane  which  led  to  the  barn-yard.  A 
lank  youth  in  overalls  tucked  into  top-boots 
and  a  gingham  shirt  and  a  wide-brimmed  straw 
hat  stood  in  the  open  doorway  of  the  barn, 
calmly  staring  at  us  as  we  approached. 

Farrell  greeted  him  familiarly  and  was  an- 
swered civilly.  Then,  without  further  parley, 
he  explained  that  we  were  come  for  something 
to  eat. 

"  Go  up  to  the  house  and  ask  the  boss,"  said 
the  hired  man. 

The  farmer  was  plainly  well-to-do.  His 
house  was  a  large,  square,  white-painted, 
wooden  structure  topped  with  a  cupola,  and 
with  well-kept  grounds  about  it,  while  the 
farm  buildings  wore  a  prosperous  air  of  pleni- 
tude. Just  then  a  well-grown  watch-dog  of 
the  collie  type  came  walking  toward  us  across 
the  lawn,  a  menacing  inquiry  in  his  face. 

""Won't  you  go?  "  suggested  Farrell. 

The  hired  man  had  caught  sight  of  the  dog, 
and  there  was  a  twinkle  in  his  eye  as  he  an- 
swered, airily, 


32  A  DAY   WITH   A  TRAMP 

"  Oh,  no,  thank  you." 

"Does  the  dog  bite?"  Farrell  ventured, 
cautiously. 

"  Yes,"  came  sententiously  from  the  hired 
man. 

"  We'd  better  get  back  to  the  road,"  Farrell 
said  to  me,  and  we  could  feel  amused  eyes  upon 
us  as  we  retraced  our  steps  to  the  track. 

Once  more  Farrell  tried  his  luck;  this  time 
at  a  meagre,  wooden,  drab  cottage  that  faced  a 
country  lane,  a  hundred  yards  from  the  rail- 
way. I  watched  him  from  the  line  and  noticed 
that  he  talked  for  some  time  with  the  woman 
who  answered  his  knock  and  stood  framed  in 
the  door. 

When  he  returned  he  had  two  large  slices 
of  bread  in  his  hand  and  some  cold  meat. 

"  I  didn't  like  to  take  it,"  he  remarked. 
"  Her  husband's  a  carpenter  and  ain't  had  no 
work  for  six  weeks.  But  she  says  she  couldn't 
have  me  go  away  hungry.  That's  the  kind 
that  always  helps  you,  the  kind  that's  in  hard 
luck  themselves,  and  knows  what  it  is." 

He  was  for  sharing  the  forage  and,  hungry 
as  he  was,  he  had  not  eaten  a  morsel  of  it  when 


A  DAY   WITH  A  TRAMP  33 

he  rejoined  me.  That  I  would  take  none 
seemed  to  him  at  first  a  personal  slight,  but  he 
understood  it  better  when  I  explained  that  I 
had  had  food  at  Morris. 

There  was  a  cloudless  sunset  that  evening, 
the  sun  sinking  in  a  crimson  glow  that  foretold 
another  day  of  great  heat.  The  stars  came 
slowly  out  over  a  firmament  of  slaty  blue,  and 
shone  obscurely  through  the  himiid  air.  Far- 
rell  and  I  were  silent  for  some  time.  Both  of 
us  had  walked  about  thii*ty-six  miles  that  day, 
and  were  intent  on  a  resting-place.  At  last 
we  began  to  catch  the  glitter  of  street-lights  in 
Ottawa,  and,  at  sight  of  them,  FarrelFs  spirits 
rose.  He  was  like  one  returning  home  after 
long  absence.  The  sound  of  a  church-bell 
came  faintly  to  us.  Farrell  held  me  by  the 
arm. 

"  You  hear  that?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes." 

"  That's  the  Methodist  church  bell." 

I  could  see  his  face  light  up,  as  though 
something  were  rousing  the  best  that  was  in 
him. 

At  the  eastern  end  of  the  town,  and  close  to 


34  A   DAY    WITH   A   TRAMP 

the  railway,  we  came  upon  a  brick-kiln.  Far- 
rell  was  perfectly  familiar  with  his  surround- 
ings now,  and  we  stopped  for  a  drink.  For 
some  reason  the  water  would  not  run  in  the 
faucet,  so  we  went  around  to  a  bam-like  build- 
ing in  the  rear.  Through  a  large,  open  door- 
way he  entered,  while  I  remained  outside. 
Soon  I  heard  him  in  conversation  with  some- 
one, who  proved  to  be  the  night-watchman, 
and,  finding  that  Farrell  was  not  likely  to  re- 
join me  soon,  I  also  entered. 

Some  moments  were  necessary  to  accustom 
one's  eyes  to  the  interior,  but  I  could  see  at 
once  the  figure  of  a  white-bearded  old  man 
lying  at  full  length  on  a  bed  of  gunny-sacks 
thrown  over  some  sloping  boards.  His  head 
was  propped  up,  and  he  held  a  newspaper 
which  he  had  been  reading  by  the  light  of  two 
large  torches  that  hung  suspended  near  him, 
and  from  which  columns  of  black  smoke  rose, 
curling  upward  into  dark  recesses  among  the 
rafters.  Everything  was  black  with  smut  and 
grimy  dust.  Soon  I  could  see  that  on  one  side 
were  great  heaps  of  coal  that  sloped  away  to 
the  outer  walls  like  the  talus  against  a  cliff. 


A  DAY   WITH   A  TRAMP  35 

Farrell  was  seated  on  a  coal-heap,  and  was 
absorbed  in  the  news  of  the  town,  as  he  gath- 
ered it  from  the  old  man.  Quite  unnoticed,  I 
sat  dovm  on  a  convenient  board  and  listened 
dreamily,  hoping  heartily  the  while  that  we 
should  not  have  to  go  much  further  that  night. 

Presently  I  found  myself  alert  to  what  was 
being  said,  for  they  were  discussing  the  ques- 
tion of  a  night's  lodging.  It  was  from  the 
watchman  that  the  suggestion  came  that  we 
should  remain  where  we  were,  and  very  readily 
we  agreed.  Taking  a  torch  from  its  socket, 
he  lighted  us  through  a  long  passage  to  an- 
other room  that  was  used  as  a  carpenter's  shop. 
A  carpenter's  bench  ran  the  length  of  it,  and 
the  tools  lay  strewn  over  its  surface.  From 
a  comer  he  drew  a  few  yards  of  old  matting, 
which  he  offered  to  Farrell  as  a  bed;  and  he 
found  a  door  off  its  hinges,  which,  when 
propped  up  at  one  end  as  it  lay  on  the  floor, 
made  what  proved  that  night  a  comfortable 
bed  for  me.  With  a  promise  to  call  us  early, 
he  left  us  in  the  dark,  and,  quickly  off  with  our 
boots,  we  wrapped  ourselves  in  our  coats  and 
were  soon  fast  asleep. 


36  A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

The  watchman  was  true  to  his  word;  for  the 
stars  were  still  shining  when  Farrell  and  I, 
hungry  and  stiff,  set  off  down  the  track  in  the 
direction  of  the  railway  station.  His  mood 
was  that  of  the  evening  before,  as  though, 
after  long  wandering,  he  was  returning  to 
his  native  place.  Recollections  of  those  ten 
months  of  sober  industry  crowded  painfully 
upon  him,  and  he  shrunk  like  a  culprit  from 
possible  recognition.  Yet  every  familiar  sight 
held  a  fascination  for  him.  With  kindling  in- 
terest he  pointed  out  the  locality  of  the  board- 
ing-house, and  again  held  me  by  the  arm  and 
made  me  listen,  until  I,  too,  could  catch  the 
sound  of  escaping  steam  at  the  tile  factory 
where  he  had  worked. 

The  iron  was  entering  into  his  soul,  but  he 
knew  it  only  as  a  painful  struggle  between  a 
desire  to  return  to  a  life  of  work  and  the  inertia 
that  would  keep  him  on  the  road.  We  walked 
on,  in  silence  for  the  most  part,  under  the 
morning  stars  that  were  dimming  at  the  ap- 
proach of  day.  When  Farrell  spoke,  it  was  to 
reveal,  unconsciously,  the  progress  of  the 
struggle  within  him. 


A  DAY  WITH   A  TRAMP  37 

"  It  ain't  no  use  tryin'  for  a  job;  I've  been 
lookin'  seven  weeks  now."  That  was  the  lie 
to  smooth  the  road  to  vagabondage. 

"  I'd  have  a  hell  of  a  time  to  get  square  in 
this  town  again.  Everybody  that  knowed  me, 
knowed  I  got  fired  for  drinkin'."  That  was 
the  truth  that  made  strait  the  gate  and  nar- 
row the  way  that  led  to  life. 

In  a  moment  of  encouragement  he  spoke  of 
the  boarding-house  keeper  and  of  her  promise 
to  take  him  back  again,  if  he  would  return  to 
work;  but  his  thoughts  of  the  girl  he  kept  to 
himself,  and  deeply  I  liked  him  for  it. 

We  were  leaving  Ottawa  behind.  With  a 
sharp  curve  the  railway  swept  around  the  base 
of  bluffs  that  rose  sheer  on  our  right  from  the 
roadbed,  rugged  and  grim  in  the  twilight,  the 
trees  on  top  darkly  outlined  against  the  sky. 
At  our  left  were  the  flooded  lowlands  of  the 
Illinois  bottom.  We  could  see  the  decaying 
cornstalks  of  last  year's  growth  just  appearing 
above  the  water  in  the  submerged  fields,  and, 
here  and  there,  a  floating  out-building  which 
had  been  carried  down  by  the  flood  and  was 
caught  among  the  trees. 


38  A  DAY  WITH  A  TRAMP 

Was  lie  man  enough  to  hold  fast  to  his 
chance,  or  would  he  allow  himself  to  drift? 
This  was  the  drama  that  was  unfolding  itself 
there  in  the  dark  before  the  dawn,  under 
frowning  banks  beside  a  flooded  river,  while 
the  silent  stars  looked  down. 

"We  came  to  another  brick-kiln,  with  its 
buildings  on  the  bank  just  above  the  rail- 
way. A  light  was  shining  from  a  shanty 
window,  and  a  well-worn  foot-path  led  from 
the  road  up  through  the  underbrush  of  the 
hillside  to  the  shanty  door.  A  night-watch- 
man was  making  a  final  round  of  the  kiln 
to  see  that  all  was  right  before  the  day's 
work  began. 

Farrell  stood  still  for  a  moment,  the  strug- 
gle fierce  within  him. 

"  Let's  get  a  drink  of  water,"  he  said. 

The  night-watchman  led  us  to  a  spring  and 
answered,  encouragingly,  Farrell's  inquiry 
about  a  possible  job. 

"  Go  up  and  ask  the  boss,"  he  said.  "  He's 
just  finished  his  breakfast.  That's  his  house," 
he  added,  pointing  to  the  shanty  with  the 
light  in  the  window. 


4 


A   DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP  39 

From  the  foot  of  the  path  I  watched  Farrell 
climb  to  the  shanty  door  and  knock.  The 
door  opened  and  the  voices  of  two  men  came 
faintly  down  to  me.  My  hopes  rose,  for 
it  was  not  merely  a  question  and  a  decisive 
reply,  but  the  give  and  take  of  continued  dia- 
logue. The  suspense  had  grown  to  physical 
suffering,  when  I  saw  Farrell  turn  from  the 
door  and  begin  to  descend  the  path. 

I  could  not  see  his  face  distinctly;  but,  as 
he  drew  nearer,  I  caught  its  expression  of  dis- 
tress. The  half-frightened,  worried  bewilder- 
ment that  I  had  noticed  on  the  day  before 
was  back  in  his  eyes,  as  he  stood  looking 
into  mine,  evidently  expecting  me  to  speak. 
I  remained  silent. 

"  I've  got  a  job,"  he  said,  presently,  and  I 
could  have  struck  him  for  the  joy  of  it. 

"  Me  troubles  is  just  begun,  for  the  whole 
town  knows  me  for  a  bum,"  he  added,  while 
his  anxious  eyes  moved  restlessly  behind  frown- 
ing brows.  I  said  nothing,  but  waited  until  I 
could  catch  his  eye  at  rest.  Then  out  it  came, 
a  little  painfully: 

"  I'll  go  to  the  boarding-house   to-night, 


40  A  DAY   WITH   A   TRAMP 

when  me  day's  work  is  done,  and  put  up 
there,  if  the  missus  can  take  me." 

"  Good,"  I  said,  and  I  waited  again  until 
his  gaze  was  steady  upon  me. 

For  a  day  we  had  tramped  together,  and 
slept  together  for  a  night,  and,  quite  of  his 
own  accord,  he  had  given  me  his  confidence. 
We  were  parting,  now  that  he  had  found  work, 
and  I  hoped  that  I  might  receive  the  final 
mark  of  his  trust,  so  I  waited. 

He  read  my  question,  and  his  eyes  wan- 
dered, but  they  came  back  to  mine,  and  he 
spoke  up  like  a  man: 

"  I  can't,  till  I'm  a  bit  decent  again  and  got 
some  clothes;  but  I'll  hold  down  me  job,  and, 
as  soon  as  I  can,  I'll  go  back  to  her."        , 

A  warning  whistle  blew;  Farrell  went  up 
the  path  to  take  his  place  in  the  brick-kiln,  and 
I  was  soon  far  down  the  line  in  the  direction  of 
Utica. 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS 

SCARCELY  a  generalization  with  the 
least  claim  to  value  can  be  drawn  from 
my  superficial  contact  with  the  world  of 
manual  labor  in  America,  If  there  is  one, 
it  is,  that  a  man  who  is  able  and  willing  to 
work  can  find  employment  in  this  country  if 
he  will  go  out  in  real  search  for  it.  It  may  not 
be  well  paid,  but  it  need  not  be  dishonest,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  its  failing  to  afford 
opportunities  of  making  a  way  to  improved 
position. 

And  yet,  one  has  no  sooner  made  such  a 
statement  than  it  becomes  necessary  to  qualify 
it.  Suppose  that  the  worker,  able  and  will- 
ing to  work,  is  unemployed  in  a  congested 
labor  market,  where  the  supply  far  exceeds 
the  demand,  and  suppose  that  he  must  remain 
with  his  wife  and  children,  since  he  cannot 

desert  them  and  has  no  means  of  taking  them 
48 


44  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

away.  Or  imagine  him  newly  landed,  thrown 
upon  the  streets  by  an  emigrant  agency,  igno- 
rant of  the  language  and  of  our  methods  of 
work,  and  especially  ignorant  of  the  country 
itseK.  To  the  number  of  like  suppositions 
there  is  no  end.  Actual  experience,  however, 
serves  to  focus  the  situation.  I  have  stood  be- 
side men  whom  I  knew,  and  have  seen  them 
miss  the  chance  of  employment  because  they 
were  so  far  weakened  by  the  strain  of  the 
sweating  system  that  they  were  incapable  of 
the  strain  of  hard  manual  labor. 

Even  at  the  best,  much  of  the  real  difficulty 
is  often  the  subjective  one  summed  up  in  the 
sentence  of  a  man  who  has  wide  knowledge  of 
wage-earners  in  America,  to  whom  I  once 
spoke  of  the  surprising  ease  with  which  I 
found  employment  everywhere,  except  in 
larger  towns. 

"  Oh, yes,"  he  replied;  "  but  you  forget  how 
little  gifted  with  imagination  the  people  are 
who  commonly  form  by  far  the  greater  num- 
ber of  the  unemployed." 

It  merely  serves  to  show  again  the  futility 
of  generalizing  about  labor,  as  though  it  were 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  46 

a  commodity  like  any  other,  sensitive  to  the 
play  of  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  while 
supported  by  a  thorough  knowledge  of  mar- 
kets and  the  means  of  reaching  quickly  those 
that,  for  the  time,  are  the  most  favorable. 

The  mass  which  men  speak  casually  of  as 
"  labor "  is  an  aggregation  of  individuals, 
each  with  his  human  ties  and  prejudices 
and  his  congenital  weaknesses  and  strength, 
and  each  with  his  own  salvation  to  work 
out  through  difficulties  without  and  within 
that  are  little  understood  from  the  outside. 
You  may  enter  his  world  and  share  his  life, 
however  rigid,  sustained  by  the  knowledge 
that  at  any  moment  you  may  leave  it,  and 
your  experience,  although  the  nearest  ap- 
proach that  you  can  make,  is  yet  removed 
almost  by  infinity  from  that  of  the  man  at 
your  side,  who  was  born  to  manual  labor 
and  bred  to  it,  and  whose  whole  life,  physi- 
cal and  mental,  has  been  moulded  by  its 
hard  realities. 

It  would  be  quite  true  to  say  that  "  the  prob- 
lem of  the  unemployed  in  America  is  a  prob- 
lem of  the  distribution  of  workers,"  taking 


46  WITH  IOWA  FARMERS 

them  from  regions  where  many  men  are  look- 
ing for  a  job,  to  other  regions,  where  many 
jobs  are  looking  for  a  man.  But  it  would  be 
a  shallow  truth,  with  little  insight  into  the 
real  condition  of  multitudes,  whose  life-strug- 
gle is  for  day's  bread  and  in  whom  the  gre- 
garious instinct  is  an  irresistible  gravitation. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  show  that  congestion  in  an 
industrial  centre,  with  its  accompanying  mis- 
ery, might  be  relieved  by  an  exodus  to  coun- 
try districts,  where  an  unsatisfied  demand  for 
hands  is  chronic.  But  the  human  adjustments 
involved  in  the  change  would  be  beyond  all 
calculation;  and,  even  were  they  effected,  it 
would  be  not  a  little  disturbing  in  the  end  to 
find  large  numbers  returning  to  the  town, 
frankly  preferring  want  with  companionship 
and  a  sense  of  being  in  touch  with  their  time 
to  the  comparative  plenty  and,  with  it,  the 
loneliness  and  isolation  of  country  living.  A 
part  of  the  penalty  that  one  pays  for  attempt- 
ing to  deal  with  elements  so  fascinating  as 
those  of  human  nature  is  in  their  very  incal- 
culability,  in  the  elusive  charm  of  men  who 
develop  the  best  that  is  in  them  in  spite  of  cir- 


J 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  47 

cumstances  the  most  adverse,  and  in  an  evasive 

quality  in  others  who  sometimes  fail  to  respond 

to  the  best  devised  plans  for  their  betterment. 

But  human  nature  never  loses  its  interest,  and, 

as  earnest  of  a  good  time  coming,  there  are 

always  men  in  every  generation  who,  through 

unselfish  service  of  their  fellows,  have  won 

The  faith  that  meets 
Ten  thousand  cheats. 
Yet  drops  no  jot  of  faith. 

However  little  the  fact  may  have  applied  to 
the  actual  "  problem  of  the  unemployed,"  it 
nevertheless  was  true,  as  shown  in  my  own  ex- 
perience, that  there  was  a  striking  contrast 
throughout  the  country  between  a  struggle 
among  men  for  employment  and  a  struggle 
among  employers  for  men. 

Early  in  the  journey  I  began  to  note  that 
every  near  approach  to  a  considerable  centre  of 
population  was  immediately  apparent  in  an 
increasing  difficulty  in  finding  work.  I  had 
never  a  long  search  in  the  country  or  in  coun- 
try villages,  and  I  soon  learned  to  avoid  cities, 
unless  I  was  bent  upon  another  errand  than 
that  of  employment. 


48  WITH  IOWA   FARMERS 

I  could  easily  liave  escaped  Chicago  and  its 
crowded  labor  market.  Offers  of  places  in  the 
late  autumn  as  general  utility  man  on  farms  in 
northern  Ohio  and  Indiana  were  plentiful  as 
I  passed,  and  I  well  knew,  during  a  fortnight's 
fruitless  search  for  work  in  Chicago  in  early 
winter,  that  at  any  time  a  day's  march  from 
the  city,  or  two  days'  march  at  most,  would 
take  me  to  regions  where  the  difficulty  would 
quickly  disappear.  The  temptation  to  quit 
the  experiment  altogether,  or,  at  least,  to  go 
out  to  the  more  hospitable  country,  was  then 
strong  at  times;  but  I  could  but  realize  that, 
in  yielding,  I  should  be  abandoning  a  very 
real  phase  of  the  experience  of  unskilled  labor, 
that  of  unemployment,  and  that  I  should  miss 
the  chance  of  some  contact  with  bodies  of  or- 
ganized skilled  workmen  as  well  as  with  the 
revolutionaries  who  can  be  easiest  found  in 
our  larger  towns.  So  I  remained,  and  for  two 
weeks  I  saw  and,  in  an  artificial  way,  I  felt 
something  of  the  grim  horror  of  being  penni- 
less on  the  streets  of  a  city  in  winter,  quite  able 
and  most  willing  to  work,  yet  unable  to  find 
any  steady  employment. 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  49 

"With  the  return  of  spring  I  went  into  the 
country  again,  drifting  on  with  no  more  defi- 
nite plan  than  that  of  going  westward  until  I 
should  reach  the  Pacific ;  and  here  at  once  was 
the  contrast.  Opportunities  of  work  every- 
where; with  farmers,  when  one  was  on  the 
country  roads;  in  brick-kilns,  when  bad  walk- 
ing drove  one  to  the  railway  lines. 

Farrell,  a  fellow-tramp  for  a  day  on  the 
Rock  Island  Railway  in  Illinois,  had,  for  seven 
weeks,  been  looking  for  work  from  Omaha  to 
Lima  and  back  again,  he  told  me,  and  yet  he 
got  a  job  near  Ottawa  in  response  to  his  first 
inquiry;  while  a  few  miles  farther  down  the 
line  I,  too,  was  offered  work  in  a  brick-kiln  at 
Utica.  I  did  not  accept  it,  only  because  I 
had  savings  enough  from  my  last  job  to  see  me 
through  to  Davenport. 

It  was  on  the  afternoon  of  Saturday,  June 
4,  1892,  that  I  reached  Davenport.  I  had 
followed  the  line  of  the  Rock  Island  Railway 
from  Morris,  sleeping  in  brick-kilns,  and,  one 
night,  at  Bureau  Jimction,  in  a  shed  by  the 
village  church,  and  I  was  a  bit  fagged.  I  had 
developed  a  plan  to  go  to  Minneapolis.     I 


50  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

hoped  to  work  the  passage  as  a  hand  on  a  river 
boat. 

At  the  open  door  of  a  livery-stable  I  stopped 
to  ask  the  way  to  the  office  of  the  steamboat 
line,  attracted,  no  doubt,  by  the  look  of  a  man 
who  sat  just  inside.  With  a  kindly  face  of 
German  type,  he  was  of  middle  age,  a  little 
stout,  dressed  in  what  is  known  as  a  "  business 
suit,"  and  when  he  spoke,  it  was  with  a  trace 
of  German  accent. 

Mr.  Ross  is  a  sufficiently  near  approach  to 
his  name.  He  was  not  an  Iowa  farmer,  but 
he  was  my  first  acquaintance  in  Iowa,  and  he 
had  things  to  say  about  the  unemployed.  A 
director  in  a  bank  and  the  owner  of  a  livery- 
stable,  he  was  owner  of  I  know  not  what  be- 
sides, but  I  know  that  he  was  delightfully  cor- 
dial, and  that  his  hospitality  was  of  a  kind  to 
do  credit  to  the  best  traditions  of  the  West. 

He  answered  my  question  obligingly,  then 
asked  me  whether  I  was  looking  for  a  job. 

"  For  if  you  are,"  he  added,  "  there's  one 
right  here,"  and  he  waved  his  hand  expres- 
sively in  the  direction  of  the  stalls  at  the  rear. 

This  was  more  than  I  had  bargained  for; 


WITH   IOWA   FAllMERS  61 

it  was  wholly  new  to  my  experience  to  find 
work  in  a  town  before  I  even  asked  for  it. 

I  told  him  frankly  that  I  was  out  of  employ- 
ment and  that  I  must  find  some  soon,  but  that 
there  were  reasons,  at  the  moment,  why  I 
wished  to  reached  Minneapolis  as  early  as  pos- 
sible. 

Being  without  the  smallest  gift  of  mimicry 
I  could  not  disguise  my  tongue,  and  it  had 
been  a  satisfaction  from  the  first  to  find  that 
this  lack  in  no  way  hampered  me.  I  was  ac- 
cepted readily  enough  as  a  working-man  by 
my  fellows,  and  my  greenness  and  manner  of 
speech,  I  had  every  reason  to  think,  were 
credited  to  my  being  an  immigrant  of  a  new 
and  hitherto  unknown  sort. 

"  What's  your  trade?  "  the  men  with  whom 
1  worked  would  generally  ask  me,  supposing 
that  clumsiness  as  a  day  laborer  was  accounted 
for  by  my  having  been  trained  to  the  manual 
skill  of  a  handicraft. 

"  What  country  are  you  from  ? "  they  in- 
quired, and  when  I  said  "  Black  Rock,"  which 
is  the  point  in  Connecticut  from  which  I  set 
out,  I  have  no  doubt  that  there  came  to  their 


62  WITH  IOWA  FARMERS 

minds  visions  of  an  island  in  distant  seas, 
where  any  manner  of  strange  artisan  might  be 
bred. 

What  they  thought  was  of  little  conse- 
quence; that  they  were  willing  to  receive  me 
with  naturalness  to  their  companionship  as  a 
fellow-workman  was  of  first  importance  to  me, 
and  this  was  an  experience  that  never  failed. 

At  last  I  was  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and, 
that  I  might  pass  as  a  man  of  education  in  the 
dress  of  a  laborer,  was  a  matter  of  no  note, 
since  men  of  education  in  the  ranks  of  work- 
men have  not  been  uncommon  there. 

It  was  plainly  from  this  point  of  view  that 
Mr.  Ross  was  talking  to  me.  If  I  was  an  edu- 
cated man,  it  was  my  own  affair.  That  for  a 
time,  at  least,  I  had  been  living  by  day's  labor 
was  evident  from  my  dress,  and  it  was  not  un- 
likely that  I  was  looking  for  a  job.  Happen- 
ing to  have  a  vacant  place  in  the  stable,  he 
offered  it  to  me,  and,  being  interested  in  what 
I  had  to  say,  he  led  me  to  speak  on  of  work 
during  the  past  winter  in  Chicago,  and  my 
slight  association  there  with  the  unemployed 
and  with  men  of  revolutionary  ideas. 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  63 

Before  I  knew  it,  we  were  drifting  far  down 
a  stream  of  talk,  and  time  was  flying.  Six 
months'  living  in  close  intimacy  with  what  is 
saddest  and  often  cruelest,  in  the  complex  in- 
dustrialism of  a  great  city  had  produced  a  de- 
pression, which  I  had  not  shaken  off  in  three 
weeks'  sojourn  in  the  wholesome  country.  I 
was  steeped  in  the  views  of  men  who  told  me 
that  things  could  never  grow  better  until  they 
had  grown  so  much  worse  that  society  would 
either  perish  or  be  reorganized.  The  needed 
change  was  not  in  men,  they  agreed,  but  in 
social  conditions;  and  from  every  phase  of  So- 
cialism and  Anarchy,  I  had  heard  the  propa- 
ganda of  widely  varying  changes,  all  alike, 
however,  prophesying  a  regenerated  society, 
the  vision  of  which  alone  remained  the  hope 
and  faith  of  many  lives. 

The  pent-up  feelings  of  six  months  found  a 
sympathetic  response  in  Mr.  Ross;  the  more  so 
as  I  discovered  in  him  a  wholly  different  point 
of  view.  He  had  no  quarrel  with  conditions 
in  America.  As  a  lad  of  fourteen  he  came 
from  Germany  and,  having  begun  life  here 
without  friends  or  help  of  any  Idnd,  he  was 


64  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

now,  after  years  of  work  and  thrift,  a  man  with 
some  property  and  with  many  ties,  not  the  least 
of  which  was  a  love  for  the  country  which  had 
given  him  so  good  a  chance. 

The  mere  suggestion  of  a  programme  of 
radical  change  roused  him.  He  began  some- 
what vehemently  to  denounce  a  class  of  men, 
foreigners,  many  of  them,  strangers  to  our  in- 
stitutions, irresponsible  for  the  most  part,  who 
bring  with  them  from  abroad  revolutionary 
ideas  which  they  spread,  while  enjoying  the 
liberities  and  advantages  of  the  nation  that 
they  try  to  harm. 

"  Why  don't  they  stay  in  their  own  coun- 
tries and  '  reform '  them? "  he  added. 
"  Thousands  of  men  who  have  come  here  from 
the  Old  World  have  raised  themselves  to  posi- 
tions of  honor  and  independence  and  wealth  as 
they  never  could  have  done  in  their  native 
lands.  And  yet  these  disturbers  would  upset 
it  all,  a  system  that  for  a  hundred  years  and 
more  we  have  tried  and  found  not  wanting. 

"  I  am  interested  in  a  local  bank,"  he  con- 
tinued. "  The  management  has  been  suc- 
cessful; the  directors  are  capable  men,  and  the 
investments  pay  a  fair  dividend.     Now  sup^ 


WITH   IOWA   FARMERS  55 

pose  someone,  the  least  responsible  person  in 
the  corporation,  were  to  come  forward  with  a 
new,  imtried  system  of  banking  and  should 
insist  upon  its  adoption  and  even  threaten  the 
existence  of  the  bank  if  his  plan  should  be 
rejected.  That  would  be  a  case  like  this  of 
your  Socialist  and  Anarchist." 

He  was  a  little  heated,  but  he  caught  him- 
self with  a  laugh  and  was  smiling  genially  as 
he  added: 

"  I  see  your  '  unemployed '  friends  often. 
Scarcely  a  day  passes  that  men  don't  come  in 
here  asking  for  a  job.  My  experience  is  that 
if  they  were  half  as  much  in  earnest  in  look- 
ing for  work  as  I  am  in  looking  for  men  that 
can  work,  they  wouldn't  search  far  or  long. 
I've  tried  a  good  many  of  them  in  my  time.  I 
can  tell  now  in  five  minutes  whether  a  man 
has  any  real  work  in  him;  and  those  that  are 
worth  their  keep  when  you  haven't  your  eye 
on  them,  are  as  scarce  as  hens'  teeth.  There 
are  good  jobs  looking  for  all  the  men  that  are 
good  enough  for  them;  if  you  want  to  prove 
it,  start  right  in  here,  or  go  into  the  State  and 
ask  the  farmers  for  a  chance  to  work." 

I  did  not  say  that  this  last  was  the  very 


66  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

thing  I  meant  to  do.  Instead,  I  began  to  tell 
him  of  the  cases  that  I  knew  of  men,  who, 
through  no  fault  of  their  own,  were  out  of 
work  and  were  not  free  to  go  where  it  could  be 
easily  found.  Mr.  Eoss  was  sympathetic  with 
what  was  real  and  personal  in  the  sufferings  of 
unfortunate  workers;  and  gathering  encour- 
agement, I  went  on  to  speak  of  suffering  no 
less  real  which  was  the  result  of  sheer  incapac- 
ity, a  native  weakness  of  will  or  lack  of  courage 
or  perseverance.  This  made  him  smile  again, 
and,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  he  asked  me 
whether  I  did  not  think  it  was  expecting  a 
good  deal  of  organized  society  to  provide  for 
the  unfit.  Then  drawing  out  his  watch,  he 
glanced  at  it  and,  turning  to  me  with  a  fine 
disregard  of  the  outer  man,  he  asked  me  to  go 
home  with  him  to  supper.  I  should  have  been 
delighted.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  have  gone.  I 
had  not  forgotten,  however,  a  too  hospitable 
minister  in  Connecticut;  but  at  the  next  mo- 
ment I  accepted  gladly  Mr.  Boss's  invitation 
to  drive  with  him  in  the  evening. 

Behind   a  sorrel   filly  that  fairly  danced 
with  delight  of  motion,  we  set  out  an  hour 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  57 

or  more  before  sunset,  and  Mr.  Ross  drove 
first  through  business  streets,  pointing  out  to 
me  the  principal  buildings  as  we  passed,  then 
up  to  the  higher  levels  of  the  hillside,  on  which 
the  city  stands,  through  an  attractive  residence 
quarter.  From  there  we  could  look  down 
upon  the  river  flowing  between  banks  of 
wooded  hills,  with  its  swollen,  muddy  waters 
made  radiant  by  the  sunset.  Then  back  to  the 
lower  city  we  went  and  out  over  the  bridge  to 
the  military  post  of  Rock  Island,  past  the 
arsenal  and  the  barracks  to  the  officers'  quar- 
ters among  splendid  trees  and  broad  reaches  of 
shaded  lawn,  and  finally  to  an  old  farm-house, 
which  had  been  the  home  of  Colonel  Daven- 
port at  the  time  of  his  struggles  with  the 
Indians.  It  was  not  a  distant  date  in  actual 
years,  but  the  contrast  with  the  present  sway  of 
modem  civilization  seemed  to  link  it  with  a 
far  antiquity. 

The  streets  were  ablaze  with  electrics  as  we 
drove  through  the  cities  of  Rock  Island  and 
Moline,  where  the  pavements  were  thronged 
by  slowly  moving  crowds. 

When  I  left  Minneapolis,  a  little  more  than 


68  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

a  week  later,  I  had  in  mind  Mr.  Ross's  chal- 
lenge that  any  search  for  work  in  the  interior 
of  the  State  would  discover  abundant  oppor- 
tunities. I  was  bound  next,  therefore,  for  the 
Iowa  border.  It  would  not  have  taken  long  to 
reach  it  at  the  usual  rate  of  thirty  miles  a  day. 
But  I  did  not  go  through  directly.  For  sev- 
eral days  I  worked  for  a  fine  old  Irish  farmer 
near  Belle  Plain,  whose  family  was  stanch 
Roman  Catholic,  and  whose  wife  was  a  veri- 
table sister  of  mercy  to  the  whole  country  side, 
indefatigable  in  ministry  to  the  sick  and  poor. 
A  few  days  later  I  stopped  again  and  spent  a 
memorable  week  as  hired  man  on  Mr.  Barton's 
farm  near  Blue  Earth  City. 

It  was  well  along  in  July,  therefore,  when 
I  crossed  into  Iowa  from  the  north,  walking 
down  by  way  of  Elmore  and  Ledyard  and  Ban- 
croft to  Algona,  where  I  spent  a  few  days  and 
then  set  out  for  Council  Bluffs. 

The  walk  from  Algona  to  Council  Bluffs 
was  a  matter  of  two  hundred  miles  and  a  little 
more,  perhaps.  The  heat  was  intense,  but, 
apart  from  some  discomfort  due  to  that,  it 
was  a  charming  walk,  leading  on  through  re- 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  69 

gions  that  varied  widely  but  constantly  pre- 
sented new  phases  of  native  wealth.  I  should 
have  enjoyed  it  more  but  for  the  awkward- 
ness of  my  position.  It  was  embarrassing  to 
meet  the  farmers,  yet  I  wished  to  meet  all 
that  I  could.  It  was  not  easy  to  frame  an  ex- 
cuse for  not  accepting  the  work  that  was  con- 
stantly offered  to  me.  To  negotiate  with  a 
farmer  for  the  job  of  helping  with  the  chores 
in  payment  for  a  night's  lodging  and  break- 
fast was  trying  to  his  temper,  when  he  was 
at  his  wit's  end  for  hands  to  help  at  the  harvest- 
ing. I  felt  like  one  spying  out  the  land  and 
mocking  its  need. 

Through  a  long,  hot  afternoon  I  walked 
from  Algona  in  the  direction  of  Humboldt, 
some  twenty-six  miles  to  the  south.  The  coun- 
try roads  were  deserted,  the  whole  population 
being  in  the  hay-fields,  apparently.  The  corn, 
which  was  late  in  the  planting,  owing  to  the 
spring  floods,  was  making  now  a  measured 
growth  of  five  inches  in  the  day. 

In  the  evening  twilight  I  passed  through 
the  Roman  Catholic  community  of  St.  James 
and  walked  on  a  few  miles  in  the  cool  of  the 


60  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

evening.  Not  every  farm-liouse  that  I  saw 
wore  an  air  of  prosperity.  I  came  upon  one, 
which,  even  in  the  dark  of  a  starlit  night,  gave 
evidence  of  infirm  fortune.  The  garden-gate 
was  off  its  hinges  and  was  decrepit  besides. 
With  some  difficulty  I  repropped  it  against  the 
tottering  posts  when  I  entered.  In  a  much 
littered  cow-yard,  I  found  a  middle-aged 
farmer,  who  with  his  hired  man  had  just  fin- 
ished the  evening  milking.  Without  a  word 
he  stood  pouring  the  last  bucket  of  milk,  slowly 
through  a  strainer  into  a  milk-can  on  the  other 
side  of  the  fence,  as  he  listened  to  an  account 
of  myself.  What  I  wanted  was  a  place  to 
sleep  and  a  breakfast  in  the  morning.  In  re- 
turn I  offered  to  do  whatever  amount  of  work 
he  thought  was  fair.  When  the  bucket  was 
empty  he  gave  me  a  deliberate  look,  then  sim- 
ply asked  me  to  follow  him  to  the  house. 
Throwing  himself  at  full  length  on  the  sloping 
cellar-door,  he  pointed  to  a  chair  on  the  door- 
step near  by  as  a  seat  for  me,  and  began  to 
question  me  about  the  crops  in  the  country 
about  Algona.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to 
divert  him  soon  to  his  own  concerns,  and,  for 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  61 

an  hour  or  more,  I  listened,  while  he  told  me  of 
a  long  struggle  on  his  farm.  For  fifteen  years, 
he  had  worked  hard,  he  said,  and  had  seen  the 
gradual  settlement  and  growth  of  the  region 
immediately  about  him;  yet,  with  slightly 
varying  fortunes,  he  was  little  better  off  than 
when  he  took  up  the  farm  as  a  pioneer. 

There  was  a  mystery  in  it  all  that  baffled 
him.  Low  prices  were  the  ostensible  cause  of 
his  ill-success;  he  could  scarcely  get  more  for 
his  crops  than  they  cost  him ;  but  back  of  low 
prices  was  something  else,  an  incalculable 
power  which  took  vague  form  in  his  mind  as 
a  conspiracy  of  the  rich,  who  seemed  to  him 
not  to  work  and  yet  to  have  unmeasured 
wealth,  while  he  and  his  kind  could  hardly  live 
at  the  cost  of  almost  unceasing  toil. 

By  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  were  at 
the  chores,  and  were  hungry  enough  when  the 
summons  came  to  breakfast  at  a  little  after  six. 
There  is,  in  certain  forms  of  it,  a  cheerlessness 
in  farm-life  the  gloom  of  which  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  heighten.  The  call  to  breakfast  came 
from  the  kitchen,  which  was  a  shed-like  annex 
to  the  small,  decaying,  wooden  farm-house. 


62  WITH  IOWA  FARMERS 

The  farmer,  the  hired  man,  and  I  washed  our- 
selves at  the  kitchen-door,  then  passed  from  the 
clear  sunlight  into  a  room  whose  smoke-black- 
ened walls  were  hung  round  with  kitchen  uten- 
sils. The  air  was  hot  and  dense  with  the 
fumes  and  smoke  of  cooking.  A  slovenly 
woman  stood  over  the  stove,  turning  potatoes 
that  were  frying  in  a  pan,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  she  scolded  two  ragged  children,  who 
sat  at  the  table  devouring  the  food  with  their 
eyes. 

Scarcely  a  word  was  spoken  during  the  meal, 
until,  near  its  close,  the  farmer's  wife  quite 
abruptly — as  though  resuming  an  interrupted 
conversation — broke  into  further  account  of  a 
horse-thief,  whose  latest  escapade  had  been  not 
far  away,  but  those  whereabouts  remained  un- 
known. The  very  obvious  point  of  which  was 
that,  however  her  husband  had  been  imposed 
upon,  my  efforts  to  pass  as  an  honest  man  had 
not  met  with  unqualified  success  with  her.  In 
such  manner  the  breakfast  was  saved  from  dul- 
ness,  and  I  was  sure  that  the  parting  guest 
was  heartily  speeded  when  my  stint  was  done. 

There  is  a  high  exhilaration  in  a  day's  walk, 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  63 

even  in  the  heat  of  July.  The  feeling  of 
abounding  life  that  comes  with  the  opening 
day  after  sound  sleep  and  abundant  food, 
when  one  is  free  from  care,  and  there  are 
twelve  hours  of  daylight  ahead  for  leagues  of 
delightful  country,  is  like  the  pulse  of  a  kingly 
sport.  From  higher  points  of  rolling  land  I 
could  see  far  over  the  squares  marked  by  the 
regularly  recurring  roads  that  intersect  one 
another  at  right  angles  at  intervals  of  a  mile. 
The  farm-houses  stood  hidden  each  in  a  small 
grove,  with  the  wheel  of  a  windmill  invariably 
whirling  above  the  tree-tops,  and  with  here 
and  there  a  long  winding  line  of  willows  and 
stimted  oaks  marking  the  course  of  a  stream. 

It  was  but  twelve  miles  to  Humboldt,  and 
I  stopped  there  only  long  enough  to  ask  the 
way  to  Fort  Dodge.  The  roads  were  as  de- 
serted as  on  the  day  before,  and  I  was  some 
distance  past  Humboldt  before  I  fell  in  with 
a  single  farmer. 

He  came  rumbling  down  the  road,  sitting 
astride  the  frame  of  a  farm-wagon  from  which 
the  box  had  been  removed.  The  fine  dust  was 
puffing  like  white  smoke  about  his  dangling 


64  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

legs,  while  the  massive  harness  rattled  over 
the  big-jointed  frames  of  the  horses. 

"  You  may  as  well  ride,"  he  called,  as  he 
overtook  me,  and  I  lost  no  time  in  getting  on 
behind. 

More  fruitful  as  a  field  of  conversation 
even  than  the  weather  were  the  crops  at  that 
season.  I  had  picked  up  a  smattering  of 
the  lingo,  and  we  were  soon  commenting 
on  the  abundant  yield  of  hay,  and  the  fair 
promise  of  rye  and  wheat,  and  the  favorable 
turn  that  the  unbroken  heat  had  given  to 
the  prospects  of  the  corn,  in  the  hope  that 
it  held,  in  spite  of  the  late  planting,  of  its 
ripening  before  the  coming  of  the  frost.  But, 
for  all  the  good  outlook,  the  farmer  was  far 
from  cheerful.  I  suspected  the  cause  of  his 
depression  and  avoided  it  from  fear  of  embar- 
rassment to  myself,  while  yet  I  wished  to  hear 
his  views  about  the  situation.  When  they 
came,  they  were  what  I  anticipated : 

A  good  hay  crop?  Yes,  there  could  hardly 
be  a  better,  but  of  what  use  was  hay  that 
rotted  in  the  fields  before  you  could  house  it, 
for  want  of  hands?  And  this  was  but  the  be- 
ginning of  the  difficulty. 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  65 

The  whole  harvest  lay  ahead,  and  the  ad- 
vancing summer  brought  no  solution  of  the 
problem  of  "  help."  He  was  very  graphic  in 
his  account  of  the  year-around  need  of  men 
that  grows  acutest  in  midsummer,  and  I  did 
not  escape  the  embarrassment  that  I  feared; 
for,  when  he  pressed  me  to  go  to  work  for  him, 
I  could  only  urge  weakly  that  I  felt  obliged  to 
hurry  on.  He  was  glad  to  be  rid  of  me  at  the 
parting  of  our  ways,  a  little  farther  down  the 
road,  where  he  turned  to  the  unequal  strug- 
gle on  his  farm,  while  I  walked  on  at  leisure 
in  the  direction  of  Fort  Dodge. 

A  heave  of  the  great  plain  raised  me  pres- 
ently to  a  height,  from  which,  far  over  the  roll 
of  the  intervening  fields,  with  the  warm  sun- 
light on  their  varying  growths,  I  could  see  the 
church  spires  in  the  town  surrounded  almost 
by  wooded  hills,  with  the  Des  Moines  River 
flowing  among  them.  The  air  was  full  of  the 
distant  clatter  of  mowing  machines,  which  car- 
ries with  it  the  association  of  stinging  heat  and 
the  patient  hum  of  bees  and  the  fragrance  of 
new  hay. 

As  I  descended  into  the  next  hollow  there 


66  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

came  driving  toward  me  a  young  farmer.  He 
was  seated  on  a  mower,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the 
wide  swath  cut  by  the  machine  in  its  course 
just  within  a  zigzag  rail  fence  that  flanked  the 
road.  The  green  timothy  fell  before  the  blade 
in  thick,  soft,  dewy  widths  that  carpeted  the 
meadow.  A  chance  glance  into  the  road  dis- 
covered me,  and  he  brought  the  horses  to  a 
stand.  As  he  pushed  back  his  hat  from  his 
streaming  forehead,  I  could  see  that  he  was 
young,  but  much  worn  with  care  and  over- 
work. 

"  Will  you  take  a  job  with  me?  "  he  asked, 
and  the  wonder  of  it  was  the  greater,  since 
that  whole  region  has  through  it  a  strong 
Yankee  strain,  and  men  of  such  stock  are  sore 
pressed  when  they  come  to  the  point  without 
preliminaries. 

Again  I  had  to  resort  to  a  feeble  excuse  of 
necessity  to  go  farther;  but,  curious  as  to  the 
response,  I  ventured  an  inquiry  about  the 
local  demand  for  men. 

"  Oh,  everyone  needs  men,"  the  farmer 
rejoined  impatiently,  as,  tightening  the  reins 
and  adjusting  his  hat,  he  started  the  horses, 


WITH   IOWA    FARMERS  67 

anxious,  evidently,  to  drown  further  idle  talk 
in  the  sharp  noise  of  the  swift-mowing  knives. 

In  the  river  valley  I  was  not  long  in  finding 
a  lane  which  disappeared  among  a  scattered 
growth  of  stunted  trees  in  the  direction  of  a 
rocky  bluff  that  marked  the  bed  of  the  stream. 
Every  day's  march  brought  some  chance  of  a 
bath,  and,  at  times,  I  was  fortunate  enough  to 
fall  in  with  two  or  three  in  thirty  miles,  and 
nothing  could  be  more  restful  or  refreshing  in 
a  long  walk,  or  a  better  preventive  against 
the  stiffness  that  is  apt  to  accompany  it.  Here 
I  could  both  bathe  and  swim  about,  and  when 
I  regained  the  highway,  it  was  almost  with 
the  feeling  of  vigor  of  the  early  morning. 

The  main-travelled  road  did  not  lead  me,  as 
I  expected,  into  Fort  Dodge,  but  to  an  inter- 
section of  two  roads,  a  little  west  of  the  town. 
Instead  of  going  eastward  into  the  city,  I 
turned  to  the  west,  in  the  direction  of  Tara,  a 
small  village  on  a  branch  of  the  Rock  Island 
Railway.  The  setting  sun  was  shining  full 
in  my  face,  but  no  longer  with  much  effect  of 
heat.  As  I  hurried  on  in  the  fast  cooling  air, 
the  way  led  by  an  abrupt  descent  into  a  ravine, 


68  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

where  flowed  a  small  tributary  of  the  Des 
Moines  among  rocks  and  sheer  banks,  forming 
a  striking  contrast  with  the  rolling  prairie.  It 
was  but  a  break  in  the  plain.  From  the  top 
of  the  opposite  bank,  the  land  stretched  away 
again  in  undulating  surface,  with  much  evi- 
dence of  richness  of  soil  and  the  wealth  of  the 
farmers. 

Not  without  exception,  however;  for,  at 
nightfall,  I  was  nearing  a  small  house,  through 
whose  coating  of  white  paint  the  blackened 
weather-boards  appeared  with  an  effect  of 
much  dilapidation.  When  I  entered  the  gar- 
den, passing  under  low  shade-trees,  I  met  a 
sturdy  Irishman,  bare-headed,  and  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves, whose  thin  white  hair  and  beard  alone 
suggested  advancing  years. 

There  was  no  difficulty  in  dealing  with  him. 
He  was  not  in  need  of  a  hired  man,  but  was 
perfectly  willing  that  I  should  have  supper  and 
breakfast  at  his  home  and  a  bed  in  the  bam 
on  the  terms  of  a  morning  stint.  Accord- 
ingly, I  followed  light-heartedly  into  the 
kitchen,  where,  in  the  dim  light,  I  saw  his 
wife  and  a  married  daughter,  with  her  son,  a 
lad  of  six  or  eight. 


WITH   IOWA   FARMERS  69 

Supper  was  ready;  with  every  mark  of 
kindly  hospitality,  the  farmer's  wife,  a  moth- 
erly body  with  an  ill-defined  waist,  made  ready 
for  me  at  the  table,  moving  lightly  about,  in 
spite  of  age  and  bulk,  in  bare  feet,  that  ap- 
peared from  under  the  skirt  of  a  dark  print 
dress  with  an  apron  covering  its  ample  front. 
A  lamp  was  lighted,  and  from  the  vague  walls 
there  looked  down  upon  us  the  faces  of  saints 
in  bright-colored  prints.  A  kitchen  clock 
ticked  on  the  mantel-shelf,  and  a  kettle  was 
singing  on  an  iron  stove  that  projected  half 
way  into  the  room.  We  supped  on  tea  and 
bread  and  hard  biscuits,  while  the  farmer  ques- 
tioned me  about  the  crops  along  the  day's 
route,  and  his  wife  heaved  deep  sighs  and 
broke  into  a  muttered  "  The  Lord  bless  us!  " 
when  I  owned  to  having  walked  some  thirty- 
five  miles  since  morning. 

I  was  charmed  with  my  new  acquaintances. 
There  was  no  embarrassment  in  being  with 
them,  and  nothing  of  restraint  or  gloom  in 
their  home.  After  supper  I  pumped  the 
water  for  the  stock,  and  helped  with  the  milk- 
ing.    When  the  chores  were  done,  I  asked 


70  WITH  IOWA  FAEMEES 

leave  to  go  to  bed.  A  heavy  quilt  and  pillow 
were  given  to  me,  and,  spreading  them  upon 
the  hay,  I  slept  the  sleep  of  a  child. 

The  cows  had  been  milked  in  the  morning 
and  were  about  to  be  driven  to  pasture,  when 
there  arose  a  difficulty  in  separating  from  its 
mother  a  calf  that  was  to  be  weaned.  The  calf 
had  to  be  penned  in  the  shed,  while  the  old 
cow  went  afield  with  the  others.  To  imprison 
it,  however,  proved  no  easy  undertaking. 
With  the  agility  of  a  half-back,  it  dodged  us 
all  over  the  cow-yard,  encouraged  by  the  calls 
of  its  mother,  from  the  lane,  and  it  evaded  the 
shed-door  with  an  obstinacy  that  was  responsi- 
ble for  adding  materially  to  the  content  of  the 
old  man's  next  confession. 

For  some  time  his  wife  stood  by,  her  bare 
feet  in  the  grass,  her  arms  akimbo,  and  her 
gray  hair  waving  in  the  morning  breeze,  as, 
with  unfeigned  scorn,  she  watched  our  baffled 
manoeuvres.     She  could  not  endure  it  long. 

"  I'll  catch  the  beast,"  she  shouted  presently 
in  richest  brogue;  and,  true  to  her  word,  by  a 
simple  strategy,  she  surprised  the  little  brute 
and  had  it  by  a  hind  leg  before  it  suspected  her 
nearness. 


WITH   IOWA   FARMERS  71 

But  capture  was  no  weak  surrender  on  the 
part  of  the  calf.  For  its  dear  life  it  kicked, 
and  the  picture  of  the  hardy  old  woman, 
shaken  in  every  muscle  imder  the  desperate 
lunges  of  the  calf,  as,  clinging  with  both  hands 
to  its  leg,  she  called  to  us  with  lusty  expletives, 
to  help  her  before  she  was  "  killed  entirely," 
is  one  that  lingers  gleefully  in  memory.  The 
old  man  winked  at  me  his  inj&nite  appreciation 
of  the  scene,  and  between  us  we  relieved  his 
panting  wife  and  soon  housed  the  calf. 

When  my  work  was  done,  and  I  had  said 
good-by  to  the  family,  whose  hospitality  I  had 
80  much  enjoyed,  I  set  out  for  Gowrie,  which 
was  twenty  odd  miles  away.  At  Tara  I  found 
that,  to  avoid  a  long  detour,  I  must  take  to  the 
railway  as  far,  at  least,  as  Moorland,  the  next 
station  on  the  line.  Walking  the  track  was 
sometimes  a  necessity,  but  always  an  unwel- 
come one.  It  is  weary  work  to  plod  on  and 
on,  over  an  unwavering  route,  where  an  occa- 
sional passing  train  mocks  one's  slow  advance, 
and  where,  for  miles  the  only  touch  of  human 
nature  is  in  a  shanty  of  a  section  boss,  with 
ragged  children  playing  about  it,  and  a  hag- 


72  WITH   IOWA   FAKMERS 

gard  woman  plying  her  endless  task,  while  a 
mongrel  or  two  barks  after  one,  far  down  tlie 
line. 

At  Moorland  I  resumed  the  highway,  and 
held  to  it  with  uneventful  march,  until,  with- 
in a  mile  or  two  of  Gowrie,  two  men  in  a 
market-wagon  overtook  me  and  offered  me  a 
lift  into  the  village. 

To  me  the  notable  event  of  the  day  was  a 
drive  of  several  miles  with  a  farmer,  in  the 
afternoon.  He  had  been  to  the  freight  sta- 
tion in  Gowrie,  to  get  there  a  reaper,  which 
had  been  ordered  out  from  Chicago.  The  ma- 
chine, in  all  the  splendor  of  fresh  paint,  lay  in 
the  body  of  the  wagon,  while  he  sat  alone  on 
the  high  seat  in  front. 

When,  at  his  invitation,  I  climbed  up  be- 
side him,  I  was  delighted  with  the  first  impres- 
sion of  the  man.  In  the  prime  of  life  and  of 
very  compact  figure,  his  small  dark  eyes,  that 
were  the  brighter  for  contrast  with  a  swarthy 
complexion,  moved  with  an  alertness  that  de- 
noted energy  and  force.  Individuality  was 
stamped  upon  him  and  showed  itself  in  the 
trick  of  the  eye,  and  in  every  tone  of  his  voice. 


WITH   IOWA    FARMERS  73 

He  asked  me  where  I  was  going,  and  said 
that  he  could  take  me  five  miles  over  the  road 
toward  Jefferson,  "  unless,"  he  added,  "  you'll 
stop  at  my  farm  and  work  for  me." 

I  thanked  him,  but  said  that  I  would  keep 
to  the  road  for  the  present,  and  then  I  changed 
the  subject  to  the  reaper.  It  was  of  the  make 
of  the  factory  in  which,  for  eight  weeks,  dur- 
ing the  previous  winter,  I  worked  as  a  hand- 
truckman,  and  very  full  of  association  it  was  as 
I  looked  upon  it  in  changed  surroundings. 
Hundreds  of  such  tongues  John  Barry  and  I 
had  loaded  on  our  truck  in  the  paint-shop,  then 
stacked  them  under  the  eaves  over  the  plat- 
form; scores  of  such  binders  we  had  trans- 
ferred from  the  dark  warehouses  to  the  wait- 
ing freight-cars  below.  Equally  familiar 
looked  the  "  wider,"  and  the  receptacle  for 
twine,  and  the  "  binder,"  and  the  "  bar."  I 
told  the  farmer  that  I  had  been  a  hand  in  the 
factory  where  his  machine  was  made,  and  he 
appeared  interested  in  the  account  of  the  vast 
industry  where  two  thousand  men  work  to- 
gether in  so  perfect  a  system  of  the  division  of 
labor,  that  a  complete  reaper,  like  his  own,  is 


74  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

turned  out  in  periods  of  a  few  minutes  in  every 
working  day. 

He,  too,  was  autobiographical  in  his  turn. 
His  history  was  one  of  the  innumerable  ex- 
amples at  the  West  of  substantial  success 
under  the  comparatively  simple  advantages 
of  good  health  and  an  unbounded  capacity 
for  work. 

From  an  early  home  in  Pennsylvania,  he 
drifted,  as  a  mere  boy,  into  Indiana,  and 
"  living  out "  there  to  a  farmer,  he  remained 
with  him  for  five  years.  Shrewd  enough  to 
see  his  opportunity,  and  to  seize  it,  he  made 
himself  master  of  farming,  and  became  so  in- 
dispensable to  his  employer  that  he  was  soon 
making  more  than  twenty  dollars  a  month  and 
his  keep  the  year  around.  At  the  end  of  five 
years  he  had  saved  a  little  more  than  eight 
hundred  dollars,  which  he  invested  in  a  mort- 
gage on  good  land.  Then  came  his  Wan- 
der jahre.  He  went  to  Colorado,  worked  for 
two  years  on  a  sheep  ranch,  and  looked  for 
chances  of  fortune.  They  were  not  wholly 
wanting,  but  the  prospects  were  distant,  and, 
rather  than  endure  longer  the  lonely  life  of  the 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  76 

frontier,  lie  returned  as  far  as  Iowa,  and 
bought  his  present  farm  at  the  rate  of  ten  dol- 
lars an  acre.  For  twelve  years  he  had  lived 
and  worked  upon  it.  Under  improvement, 
and  the  growth  of  population  about  it,  its 
value  had  risen  threefold,  for  he  had  re- 
cently added  to  it  a  neighboring  farm,  for 
which  he  had  to  pay  at  the  rate  of  thirty 
dollars  an  acre. 

The  narrative  was  piquant  in  the  extreme. 
There  was  in  it  so  ingenuous  a  belief  in  the 
order  of  things  under  which  he  had  risen  un- 
aided from  the  position  of  a  hired  man  to  that 
of  a  hirer  of  men.  Like  Mr.  Ross,  he  had  no 
quarrel  with  social  conditions,  except  that  they 
no  longer  furnished  him  with  such  hands  as 
he  himself  had  been.  Under  the  demoraliza- 
tion of  a  demand  for  men  far  in  excess  of  the 
supply,  the  agricultural  laborers  of  the  present 
sit  lightly  on  their  places,  and  are  mere  time 
servers,  he  said,  with  no  personal  interest  in 
their  employers'  affairs.  He  seemed  to  imply 
a  causal  relation  between  the  condition  of  the 
labor  market  as  it  affects  the  farmer  and  the 
degeneracy    in    agricultural    laborers.     But 


76  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

whether  he  meant  that  or  not,  he  was  certainly 
clear  in  an  insistence  that,  from  his  point  of 
view,  the  social  difficulty  is  one  of  individual 
inefficiency,  and  hardly  ever  takes  the  form 
of  any  real  hindrance  to  a  genuine  purpose  to 
get  on  in  the  world.  All  along  our  route  he 
enforced  the  point  by  actual  illustration,  show- 
ing how  one  farmer,  by  closest  attention  to 
business,  had  freed  himself  of  the  obligations 
at  first  incurred  in  taking  up  the  land,  and  had 
added  farm  to  farm,  while  such  another,  less 
efficient  than  his  neighbor,  had  gone  down 
under  a  burden  of  debt. 

I  opened  the  gate,  and  stood  watching  him 
as  he  drove  up  the  long  lane  leading  to  his 
house  and  barns,  while  the  horses  quickened 
their  pace  in  conscious  nearness  to  their  stalls. 
A  Philistine  of  the  Philistines  in  the  impreg- 
nable castle  of  his  hard-earned  home,  I  could 
but  like  and  honor  him. 

Under  the  stars,  on  top  of  a  load  of  hay  that 
had  been  left  standing  in  a  barn-yard  in  the 
outskirts  of  Jefferson,  I  slept  that  night,  and 
spent  most  of  the  next  day,  which  was  Sun- 
day, under  the  trees  of  the  town  square,  in 


i 


WITH   IOWA   FARMER8  77 

front  of  the  court-house,  going  in  the  morning 
to  a  Methodist  church,  where  awaited  me  the 
courteous  welcome  which  I  found  at  all  church 
doors,  whether  in  the  country  or  the  town. 
For  food  I  had  a  large  loaf  of  bread,  which  I 
had  purchased  for  ten  cents  at  Gowrie.  A 
little  beyond  Jefferson,  after  a  delightful  bath 
in  the  Raccoon  River,  with  the  uncommon 
luxury  of  a  sandy  bottom,  I  got  leave  of  a 
farmer  on  the  road  to  Scranton  to  sleep  in  his 
barn,  and,  after  the  rest  of  Sunday,  I  set  out 
on  Monday  morning  keen  and  fit  for  the  re- 
maining walk  to  Council  Bluffs. 

Monday's  march  took  me  from  a  point  not 
far  west  of  Jefferson,  by  way  of  Coon  Rapids, 
to  the  heart  of  the  hills  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Templeton,  where  I  spent  the  night  on  the 
farm  of  a  Scotsman  of  the  name  of  Hardy. 
The  heat  of  the  day  was  prodigious.  Not  like 
the  languid  heat  of  the  tropics,  it  was  as 
though  the  earth  burned  with  fever  which 
communicated  itself  in  a  nervous  quiver  to  the 
hot,  dry  air,  and  quickened  one's  steps  along 
the  baking  roads.  The  stillness  was  almost 
appalling,  and,  as  I  passed  great  fields  of 


78  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

standing  corn,  I  could  fancy  that  I  heard  it 
grow  with  a  crackle  as  of  visible  outbudding 
of  the  blades. 

I  did  not  walk  all  the  way.  Twice  in  the 
day  I  had  a  lift,  both  of  several  miles,  and 
each  with  a  farmer  whose  views  differed  as 
widely  from  the  other's  as  though  they  were 
separated  by  a  thousand  miles,  instead  of  being 
relatively  next-door  neighbors. 

The  first  lift  came  in  the  morning  along  a 
main-travelled  road  which  I  took  in  the  hope 
of  meeting  an  intersecting  one  that  would  lead 
me  on  to  Manning.  A  good-looking  young 
farmer,  fair-haired  and  blue-eyed,  asked  me  to 
the  seat  at  his  side  high  above  the  box  of  a 
farm  wagon.  We  were  not  long  in  learning 
that  both  were  interested  in  the  economics  of 
farming,  where  he  knew  much  and  I  little, 
and  where  I  was  glad  to  be  a  listener.  It  was 
like  talking  again  with  a  socialist  from  a  sweat- 
shop in  Chicago.  The  fire  of  a  new  religion 
was  in  him.  The  difference  lay  chiefly  in  that 
his  was  not  the  gospel  of  society  made  new  and 
good  by  doing  away  with  private  property  and 
substituting  a  collective  holding  of  all  the  land 


WITH   IOWA   FARMERS  79 

and  capital  that  are  made  use  of  for  produc- 
tion; his  gospel  was  that  of  "  free  silver,"  but 
he  held  it  with  a  like  unshaken  faith  in  its 
regenerating  power.  For  months  he  had  been 
preaching  it,  and  organizing  night  classes 
among  the  farmers  in  all  the  district  school- 
houses  within  reach,  for  the  purpose  of  study 
of  the  money  question.  Just  once  in  the  talk 
with  me  he  grew  convincing.  There  was 
much  of  the  usual  insistence  of  "  a  conspiracy 
among  rich  men  against  the  producing 
classes,"  whatever  that  may  mean,  and  there 
were  significant  statements  to  the  effect  that 
nine-tenths  of  the  farmers  of  the  region,  which 
he  proudly  called  "  The  Garden  of  Eden  of 
the  West,"  were  under  mortgage  to  money- 
lenders, and  that  farmers  in  general,  owing  to 
the  tyranny  of  "  the  money  power,"  were  fast 
sinking  to  a  condition  of  "  vassalage ;  "  but  at 
last  he  rose  to  something  more  intelligible.  It 
was  the  sting  of  a  taunt  that  roused  him.  He 
had  seen  copied  from  an  Eastern  newspaper 
the  statement  that  Western  farmers  were 
beginning  to  want  free  silver,  because  they 
grasped  at  a  chance  to  pay  their  debts  at 


80  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

fifty  cents  on  the  dollar.  The  man  was 
fine  in  his  resentment  of  the  charge  of  dis- 
honor. 

"  We  mean  to  pay  our  honest  debts  in  full," 
he  said;  "but  see  how  the  thing  works  out: 
I  borrowed  a  thousand  dollars  when  wheat  was 
selling  at  a  dollar  a  bushel.  If  I  raised  a 
thousand  bushels,  I  could  pay  my  debt  by  sell- 
ing them.  But  when  wheat  has  fallen  to  fifty 
cents  a  bushel,  I  must  raise  two  thousand  to 
meet  the  obligation.  That  came  of  apprecia- 
tion in  the  value  of  money.  It  is  to  the  inter- 
est of  Wall  Street  men  to  have  it  so,  while  we 
need  an  increased  volume  of  money.  They 
deal  in  dollars  and  we  in  wheat,  and  the  more 
they  can  make  us  raise  for  a  dollar,  the  better 
off  they  are.  It  costs  me  as  much  time  and 
labor  and  wages  to  raise  a  thousand  bushels  of 
wheat  as  when  it  sold  for  a  dollar,  and  the 
justice  of  the  case  would  be  in  my  paying  my 
debt  with  a  thousand  bushels,  for  I  don't  raise 
dollars,T  raise  wheat." 

No  abstract  reasoning  or  historical  examples 
could  have  convinced  him  that  an  appreciation 
in  the  value  of  money  was  due  to  causes  other 


WITH  IOWA  FARMERS  8l 

than  a  conspiracy  among  what  he  called  "  the 
money  kings,"  who,  in  some  manner,  had  got 
control  of  the  volume  of  currency  and  so  de- 
termined the  prices  of  commodities.  But 
with  all  his  hallucinations  in  finance,  it  was 
very  plain  that  the  charge  of  dishonesty  had 
been  misapplied. 

It  was  toward  the  end  of  the  day's  march 
that  I  came  by  the  second  lift.  For  miles  the 
country  had  grown  more  hilly,  and  when  I 
left  behind  me  the  village  of  Coon  Rapids  I 
found  myself  climbing  a  hill  that  was  really 
steep,  then  making  a  sharp  descent  into  a 
valley,  only  to  begin  another  hill  longer  and 
steeper  than  any  before. 

I  was  slowly  ascending  one  of  the  longest 
hills  when  a  farmer  in  a  light  market  wagon 
called  to  me,  making  offer  of  a  drive.  I  wait- 
ed at  the  crest  of  the  hill  and  climbed  to  the 
seat  at  his  side,  while  the  horses  stood  panting 
lightly  in  the  cooler  air  that  moved  across  the 
hill-tops. 

In  the  two  or  three  miles  that  we  drove  to- 
gether, the  farmer  conversed  very  freely. 
Quite  as  well  informed  as  my  acquaintance  of 


82  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

the  morning,  he  was  of  sturdier  calibre  than 
he,  and  the  difference  in  their  views  was  com- 
plete. He  knew  of  no  conspiracy  against 
farmers  or  any  "  producing  class,"  and  he  held 
that  almost  the  most  disastrous  thing  that 
could  be  done  would  be  to  disturb  the  stability 
of  the  currency.  An  appreciation  in  the  value 
of  money  there  had  been,  but  it  was  plainly 
due  to  causes  at  work  the  world  over,  and  quite 
beyond  any  man's  control.  Farmers  were  suf- 
fering from  it  now;  but  a  few  years  ago  they 
had  profited  by  appreciation  in  the  value  of 
crops,  and  might  look  hopefully  for  a  return 
of  better  times  for  them.  As  to  the  farmers 
of  that  part  of  Iowa,  their  fortune  had  been 
of  the  best.  These  hills  were  looked  upon  at 
first  as  the  least  desirable  land  and  were  last  to 
be  taken  up,  but  had  proved,  when  once  de- 
veloped, almost  the  richest  soil  in  the  State. 
The  farmers  who  settled  there  had  found  them- 
selves, in  consequence,  in  possession  of  land 
that  was  constantly  increasing  in  value. 
From  $10  an  acre  it  had  quickly  risen  to  $20, 
and  many  of  the  owners  would  now  reluctantly 
yield  their  farms  for  $40  an  acre. 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  83 

There  was  nothing  boastful  in  the  state- 
ments. My  informant  was  a  person  of  quiet 
speech  and  manner,  but  he  had  the  advantage 
of  being  able  to  enforce  from  concrete  ex- 
amples all  that  he  had  to  say,  and  the  histories 
of  most  of  the  farmers,  and  every  transaction 
in  real  estate  for  miles  around  seemed  to  be  at 
his  command. 

Nothing  could  have  fitted  better  the  mood 
in  which  I  left  him  than  my  meeting  that 
evening  with  Mr.  Hardy,  at  whose  farm  I 
spent  the  night.  A  genial  Scotsman  of  clear, 
open  countenance,  whose  deep,  rich  voice 
seemed  always  on  the  verge  of  laughter;  he 
welcomed  me  right  heartily,  and  gave  me  sup- 
per of  the  best  and  a  bed  in  the  granary  on 
fragrant  hay,  which  he  spread  there  with  his 
own  hands,  and  a  breakfast  in  the  morning; 
and  for  all  this  he  would  accept  return,  neither 
in  work  nor  pay. 

We  talked  long  together  of  English  politics, 
but  he  was  at  his  best  on  the  condition  of  the 
Iowa  farmer.  A  more  contented  man  I  have 
rarely  met,  nor  a  man  of  more  contagious 
good-humor.     As  a  youth  he  came  from  Scot- 


84  WITH   IOWA  FARMERS 

land,  and  had  been  a  pioneer  among  these  Iowa 
hills.  For  him  the  hardships  were  all  gone 
from  farming,  as  compared  with  his  early  ex- 
perience. An  accessible  market,  admirable 
labor-saving  machines,  ready  intercourse  with 
neighbors  and  with  the  outside  world,  had 
changed  the  original  struggle  under  every  dis- 
advantage to  a  life  of  ease  in  contrast.  Very 
glad  I  should  be  of  the  chance  to  accept  his 
parting  invitation  to  return  at  some  time  to 
his  home. 

Early  in  Tuesday's  march  a  young  Swedish 
farmer  picked  me  up,  and  carried  me  on  to 
within  five  miles  of  Manning;  and,  a  little  west 
of  the  town,  I  fell  in  with  another  farmer, 
who  shared  his  seat  with  me  over  six  miles  of 
the  way.  A  third  lift  of  a  couple  of  miles  into 
Irwin  helped  me  much  on  the  road  to  Kirk- 
man.  I  had  not  reached  the  village,  however, 
when  night  fell.  At  a  farm,  a  mile  or  more 
to  the  east  of  it,  I  found  as  warm  a  welcome  as 
on  the  night  before.  Supper  was  ready,  and 
room  was  made  for  me;  then  I  lent  a  hand  at 
the  milking  with  the  hired  men.  Last,  be- 
fore going  to  bed,   we  had   a  swim.     The 


WITH  IOWA   FARMERS  85 

farmer  kept  for  the  purpose  a  pool  in  the  barn- 
yard which  was  well  supplied  with  constantly 
changing  water,  and  nothing  could  have  been 
more  grateful  after  a  day  of  work  and  walking 
in  a  temperature  of  105°  in  the  shade.  I 
should  liked  to  have  remained  there  as  a  hired 
man  almost  as  much  as  with  Mr.  Hardy,  but 
the  journey  to  Council  Bluffs  was  now  well 
Tinder  way,  and  I  was  bent  upon  completing  it 
before  another  long  stop. 

On  Wednesday  I  wished  to  reduce  as  much 
as  possible  the  distance  to  Neola,  which  is  a 
village  at  the  junction  of  the  St.  Paul  and 
Kock  Island  railways;  but  I  had  to  spend  the 
night  a  few  miles  southwest  of  Shelby.  This 
was  because  I  was  not  so  fortunate  as  on  the 
day  before  in  the  matter  of  lifts.  I  got  but 
one  drive  that  day.  Turning  from  Kirkman 
into  the  stage-road  leading  into  Harlan,  the 
county-seat  of  AuduT^on  County,  I  saw  ap- 
proaching me  a  buggy  containing  two  men.  I 
stepped  aside  to  let  it  pass,  but  it  stopped  be- 
side me,  and  one  of  the  men  invited  me  to  get 
in.  The  country  doctor  was  writ  large  upon 
him,  and,  at  his  side,  was  a  coatless,  collarless, 


86  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

taciturn  youth,  wlio  clearly  was  his  "  hired 
man."  Crowded  between  them  I  sat  down, 
and  the  physician  turned  his  sharp,  genial  eyes 
upon  me. 

"  Where  are  you  from? " 

"  Where  are  you  going?  " 

"  How  old  are  you?  " 

"  What's  your  name?  " 

"  Where  do  you  expect  to  go  when  you 
die? " 

"  Why  don't  you  shave?  " 

Such  were  the  questions  that,  with  almost 
fierce  rapidity,  he  plied  me  with,  waiting 
meanwhile  for  but  the  briefest  answer  to  each. 
And  when  the  ordeal  was  over,  he  laughed  a 
low,  shrewd  laugh  while  his  eyes  twinkled  mer- 
rily, as  he  remarked,  dryly:  "  I  guess  you'll 
do." 

He  allowed  me  no  time  to  acknowledge  the 
compliment,  but  went  swiftly  on: 

"  Do  you  know  that  Mr.  Frick  has  been  shot 
and  may  die? " 

I  did  not  know  it,  for  I  had  not  seen  a  news- 
paper since  leaving  Algona,  and  my  inter- 
course had  been  with  farmers  whose  news 
reaches  them  by  the  weekly  press, 


WITH   IOWA    FARMKRS  87 

It  was  an  exceedingly  tragic  climax  to  the 
situation  at  Homestead,  and  not  without  in- 
fluence in  determining  the  sympathies  of  the 
Western  farmers  with  the  issues  involved 
there.  It  had  been  amazing  to  me  to  discover 
how  keen  was  the  interest  taken  in  the  strike 
all  along  my  route,  and  it  was  not  a  little  sig- 
nificant, I  thought,  to  find  everywhere  a  strong 
indignation  against  the  use  of  a  private  police 
force  in  accomplishing  ends  legal  in  themselves 
and  fully  provided  for  by  law  and  usage.  So 
far  in  the  struggle  the  feeling  of  the  farmers 
was  with  the  men.  Beyond  that  they  ap- 
peared uncertain.  There  was  a  question  of 
fact  to  begin  with.  Did  the  cut  affect  more 
the  hands  who  were  working  for  a  dollar  and  a 
half  a  day  or  the  skilled  workmen  who  were 
reported  to  get,  some  of  them  as  much  as  fif- 
teen dollars?  Until  this  was  clear,  there  could 
be  but  speculation. 

Most  interesting  of  all,  I  had  found  their 
attitude  toward  the  question  that  was  widely 
raised  of  a  right  the  workmen  were  said  to  have 
in  the  property  at  Homestead,  apart  from  their 
wages,  on  the  ground  of  their  having  created 


88  WITH   IOWA   FARMERS 

its  value.  Here  was  the  real  issue  of  modem 
industrialism,  and  on  it  I  found  the  farmers 
conservative,  to  say  the  least. 

The  American  farmer  is  a  landed  proprietor 
with  a  gift  for  logical  tendencies  that  does  him 
credit.  His  chiefest  aim  is  to  maintain,  if 
possible,  his  economic  independence,  and  a  doc- 
trine that  would  give  to  his  hired  man  an  ulti- 
mate claim  to  ownership  in  his  farm  is  not  one 
that  is  likely  soon  to  meet  with  wide  accept- 
ance among  his  class. 

It  was  with  the  physician  that  I  talked  these 
matters  over,  and  I  was  interested  to  find  my 
experience  confirmed  by  that  of  so  expert  an 
observer,  whose  chances  were  so  good. 

Very  reluctantly  I  parted  from  him  at  his 
door  and  made  in  the  direction  of  UTeola. 
Owing  to  rains  that  delayed  me  on  Thursday, 
I  did  not  enter  Weola  until  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon  of  that  day,  and  there  I  did  not  stop 
in  passing,  but  pressed  on  to  Underwood, 
where  I  spent  the  night. 

Friday  was  clear  again  and  hot,  but  the 
roads  were  difficult,  and  I  had  to  desert  them 
for  the  lines  of  the  St.  Paul  and  Rock  Island 


WITH   IOWA   FARMERS  89 

railways,  that  parallel  each  other  side  by  side 
for  several  miles  into  Council  Bluffs. 

For  the  past  day  I  had  not  had  a  single  offer 
of  a  job.  The  farmers,  as  I  approached  the 
town,  seemed  either  less  in  need  of  men  or 
less  willing  to  take  up  with  a  chance  wayfarer. 
No  doubt  I  should  have  had  no  difficulty  had 
I  set  about  a  search  for  work.  Certainly  I 
could  not  have  fared  better  than  I  did  for  din- 
ner at  a  farm,  where  I  was  allowed  to  lend  a 
hand  with  a  load  of  hay.  And  after  dinner, 
when  the  farmer  and  I  talked  together  for  an 
hour,  I  found  in  him  the  same  contentment 
which  struck  me  as  so  general  among  Iowa 
farmers. 

But  my  letters  were  in  the  Post-office  at 
Omaha,  and  I  felt  impatient  of  delay  until  I 
should  get  them.  I  did  not  get  them  on  that 
day,  however,  nor  for  several  days  to  come. 
In  Council  Bluffs  I  met  the  unlooked-for  bar- 
rier of  a  toll-bridge  across  the  Missouri.  Five 
cents  would  give  me  a  right  of  way,  but  I  had 
only  one,  and  must,  therefore,  look  for  work. 
I  counted  myself  very  fortunate  when,  at 
nightfall,  I  got  a  job  in  a  livery-stable. 


90  WITH   IOWA   FAEMEES 

I  had  crossed  Iowa,  and  Mr.  Ross's  promise 
had  been  abundantly  fulfilled.  On  any  day 
of  the  march  I  could  have  found  a  dozen 
places  for  the  asking,  and  scarcely  a  day  had 
passed  that  I  had  not  repeatedly  been  asked  to 
go  to  work.  I  should  have  thought  this  a 
condition  peculiar  to  the  harvest  time,  had  not 
many  of  the  farmers  told  me  that,  while  their 
need  is  greatest  then,  it  is  so  constant  always 
that  no  good  man  need  ever  be  long  without 
work  among  them. 


A  SECTION-HAND   ON  THE 
UNION  PACIFIC  RAILWAY 


A  SECTION-HAND  ON  THE 
UNION  PACIFIC  RAILWAY 

IT  cost  five  cents  to  go  from  Council  Bluffs 
to  Omaha  in  the  summer  of  1892. 
That  was  the  toll  of  a  foot  passenger  in  cross- 
ing the  bridge  which,  spanning  the  Missouri, 
joined  the  two  cities.  It  was  a  reasonable 
toll,  I  dare  say,  and  paid  probably  no  more 
than  a  fair  return  on  the  capital  invested  in 
the  bridge,  but  it  was  five  cents  and  I  had  only 
one.  One  dingy  copper  coin,  with  its  Indian 
head  and  laurel  wreath,  was  all  that  was  left  of 
the  savings  from  my  last  job.  I  must,  there- 
fore, find  work  in  Council  Bluffs,  and  the  let- 
ters which  had  been  waiting  for  me  in  Omaha 
must  wait  a  little  longer.  But  I  felt  fagged, 
for  I  had  reached  the  end  of  a  six  days'  walk 
of  some  200  miles,  so  I  took  a  seat  on  a  bench 
in  the  shade  in  the  public  square  near  a  foun- 


94  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

tain,  whose  play  was  soothing  in  the  heat  of  a 
midsummer  afternoon. 

I  thought  regretfully  then  of  the  farmer 
with  whom  I  dined  at  noon  that  day,  and  with 
whom  I  might  have  remained  as  a  hired  man. 
Besides,  I  remembered  with  some  concern  two 
men  on  foot  who  met  me  on  the  outskirts  of 
Council  Bluffs. 

"  Where  are  you  from,  partner? "  one  of 
them  asked,  with  some  bluster  in  his  manner. 

"  I've  just  come  down  through  the  State 
from  Algona,"  I  replied. 

"  Is  there  any  work  out  the  way  you 
came? " 

"  Lots  of  it,"  I  assured  him. 

"  Well,  there  ain't  none  the  way  you're 
goin'.  Me  and  me  pal  is  wore  out  lookin'  for 
a  job  in  Omaha  and  Council  Bluffs." 

I  had  come  1,500  miles  as  a  wage-earner, 
and  I  had  1,500  yet  to  go  before  I  should  reach 
the  Pacific,  but  not  yet  had  it  been  hard  to 
find  work  of  some  sort,  except  when  I  chose 
to  stay  in  a  crowded  city  in  winter.  The 
anxiety  that  I  felt  in  this  instance  proved 
groundless,  for  when,  in  the  cool  of  the  even- 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  95 

ing,  I  looked  for  employment  I  found  it  at  the 
third  application,  and  I  went  to  bed  that  night 
a  hostler  in  a  livery-stable  at  a  wage  of  twenty 
dollars  a  month  and  board  at  a  "  Fifth  Ave- 
nue "  hotel. 

Ten  dollars  less  twelve  cents,  which  were 
due  for  the  hire  of  books  at  a  stationer's  shop, 
were  clear  gain  at  the  end  of  two  weeks'  ser- 
vice in  the  stable.  But  the  necessity  of  writ- 
ing up  notes  and  of  answering  many  letters, 
besides  the  allurements  of  a  public  library, 
kept  me  for  several  days  in  Omaha,  so  that  my 
cash  had  dwindled,  when,  one  afternoon  about 
the  middle  of  August,  I  left  the  city,  with  the 
broad  State  of  Nebraska  as  the  next  step  of  the 
journey. 

It  was  natural  to  follow  the  Union  Pacific 
Railway.  It  takes  its  course  westward 
through  the  State,  and  is  paralleled  by  a  main- 
travelled  road  that  connects  the  frequent  set- 
tlements along  the  line.  Just  out  of  Omaha 
the  railroad  makes  a  southern  bend,  and  I 
avoided  this  by  following  the  directer  course 
of  the  highway  that  led  next  morning  to  a 
meeting  with  the  rails  at  Elkhom.     The  go- 


d6  A  SECTION-HAND  ON  THE 

ing  there  was  of  the  plainest.  The  railway 
followed  the  northern  bank  of  the  Platte  River 
and  the  road  followed  the  rail.  If  the  day  was 
wet,  I  left  the  road  and  walked  the  sleepers; 
if  the  day  was  dry,  I  walked  the  road,  but  al- 
ways I  was  within  easy  hail  of  a  lift,  and  so 
fell  in  with  many  an  interesting  farmer  and 
was  saved  many  miles  of  walking. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  of  a  rainy  day 
that  there  chanced  a  lift  of  the  most  timely. 
From  low,  heavy  clouds  had  been  falling  since 
early  morning  a  misty  rain  that  almost  floated 
in  the  warm,  still  air.  For  a  hundred  yards 
together  I  might  find  a  tolerable  path  along 
the  turf  at  the  edge  of  the  road.  Then,  as  the 
mud  grew  deeper,  I  took  to  the  rails  and  kept 
them,  until  the  monotony  of  the  sleepers  drove 
me  to  the  mire  again.  I  had  seen  scarcely  a 
soul  that  day  except  the  fleeting  figures  on  the 
trains  and  an  occasional  bedraggled  section- 
hand  who  looked  sullenly  at  me,  barely  deign- 
ing a  salutation  as  I  passed.  It  seemed  hardly 
worth  while  to  be  abroad,  but  I  had  found  it 
generally  best  to  stick  to  the  road  when  I 
could,  and  I  was  beginning  now  to  think  of  a 


UNION  PACIFIC   RAILWAY  97 

shelter  for  the  night  and  trying  to  find  some 
satisfaction  in  having  covered  more  than 
twenty  miles  since  morning. 

The  nimble  of  a  heavy  wagon  began  to 
sound  down  the  road;  and  when  I  could  hear 
the  splash  of  the  horses'  hoofs  near  by,  I  was 
delighted  to  catch  the  call  of  the  driver,  as  he 
asked  me  to  a  seat  at  his  side.  He  was  a  farm- 
hand, young  and  muscular  and  slouching,  as 
he  sat  stoop-shouldered,  with  the  lines  held 
loosely  in  his  bare  hands,  while  the  rain 
dripped  from  a  felt  hat  upon  the  shining  sur- 
face of  his  rubber  coat. 

Why  he  had  asked  me  to  ride  I  could  not 
clearly  see,  for  he  scarcely  turned  his  lack- 
lustre eyes  upon  me  when  I  climbed  up  beside 
him,  and  he  seemed  not  in  the  least  anxious  to 
talk. 

We  were  driving  through  a  region  that  was 
growing  familiar  from  its  changelessness. 
On  every  side  were  fields  of  corn,  unfenced, 
and  bounded  only  by  the  horizon,  apparently, 
as  they  stretched  away  into  cloudy  space. 
Like  islands  in  a  sea  of  standing  corn  were 
widely  scattered  groups  of  farm  buildings. 


98  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

their  clusters  of  cottonwood-trees  about  them 
and  sometimes  a  fruit  orchard.  And  if  there 
was  any  other  break  in  the  monotony  of  com, 
it  was  where  vast  acres  had  been  turned  to 
raising  beets  for  the  sugar  trade.  Hardly  a 
swell  marred  the  level  of  the  prairie,  and  the 
rails  reached  endlessly  on  in  an  unbending  line 
across  the  plain. 

The  usual  subjects  of  conversation  were  of 
no  avail  with  my  new  acquaintance.  He  waa 
not  interested  in  com  and  only  languidly  in 
the  experiment  with  beets,  and  the  general 
election  failed  to  move  him,  although  he  vent- 
ured so  far  as  to  insist  that  there  was  no  hope 
for  the  farmers  of  the  West  until  the  free 
coinage  of  silver  should  be  secured.  His 
mood  was  in  keeping  with  the  day,  and  life 
was  "  flat,  unprofitable,  and  stale." 

He  quickened  finally,  to  the  theme  of  work, 
but  only  as  a  vent  to  his  depression.  Work 
was  plentiful  enough ;  for  such  as  he,  life  waa 
little  else  than  work,  but  of  what  profit  waa  it 
to  slave  your  soul  out  for  enough  to  eat  and  to 
wear  and  a  place  to  sleep  ? 

There  was  no  escaping  the  tragedy  of  the 
% 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  99 

man's  history  as  he  told  me  simply  of  his 
father's  death  from  overwork  in  an  attempt  to 
pay  off  the  mortgage  on  the  farm  and  how  his 
mother  was  left  to  the  miequal  struggle.  He 
himself  was  eleven  then,  and  the  elder  of  two 
children;  he  could  remember  clearly  how  the 
home  was  lost — the  accumulated  labor  of 
many  years.  From  that  time  his  life  had 
been  an  unbroken  struggle  for  existence, 
against  odds  of  sickness  that  again  and  again 
had  swept  away  his  earnings  and  thrown  him 
back  to  the  dependence  of  an  agricultural 
laborer. 

Once  his  savings  had  gone  in  quite  another 
fashion.  It  was  at  the  very  point  when  there 
seemed  to  have  come  a  change  for  the  better 
in  his  fortunes.  He  was  $200  to  the  good  at 
the  end  of  the  last  autumn,  and  with  this  as 
an  opening  wedge  he  meant  to  force  a  way 
eventually  to  independent  business  of  his  own. 
So  he  went  to  Omaha,  and,  in  one  of  the  em- 
ployment bureaus  there,  he  met  a  man,  past 
middle  life,  who  offered  him  work  on  a  stock 
farm  twenty  miles  below  the  city.  Thirty 
dollars  a  month  were  to  be  his  wages  from  the 


100  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

first,  if  he  proved  himself  worth  so  much,  and 
there  was  to  be  an  increase  when  he  earned  it. 
In  the  meanwhile,  he  would  be  learning  the 
trade  of  rearing  horses  for  the  market,  and,  if 
he  chose  to  invest  his  savings  in  the  business, 
when  he  knew  it  better,  there  could  be  no  surer 
way,  his  informer  said,  to  a  paying  enterprise 
of  his  own. 

He  was  committing  himself  to  nothing,  he 
found,  so  he  decided  to  give  the  place  a  trial. 
His  new  employer  and  he  left  the  office  to- 
gether, and,  having  an  hour  before  train  time, 
they  went  to  a  restaurant  for  dinner,  and  the 
stock  farmer  told  his  man  much  in  detail  of 
the  farm.  He  was  an  elderly  person  of  quiet 
manner,  very  plain  of  speech,  and  friendly 
withal,  and  very  thoughtful;  for  when  they 
were  about  to  leave  the  restaurant,  he  opened 
a  small  leather  bag  that  he  carried  guardedly 
and,  disclosing  a  bank  book  and  a  considerable 
sum  of  money,  which  he  had  drawn  to  pay  the 
monthly  wages  of  the  hands,  he  suggested  to 
our  friend  to  deposit  with  them  his  own  valu- 
ables in  safety  from  the  risk  of  pickpockets 
about  the  station  and  in  the  cars,  adding,  mean- 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  101 

while,  that  he  would  then  entrust  the  bag  to 
him,  as  there  were  one  or  two  places  where  he 
wished  to  call  on  the  way  to  the  train. 

The  farm-hand  held  the  bag  firmly  as  his 
employer  and  he  walked  down  the  street  to- 
gether, and  very  firmly  as  he  waited  in  a  shop, 
where  his  boss  left  him  with  the  plea  that  he 
had  an  errand  in  an  office  overheard,  but  would 
return  in  a  few  minutes.  The  minutes  grew 
to  an  hour,  and  the  youth  would  have  been 
anxious  had  it  not  been  that  the  bag  with  his 
savings  was  safe  in  his  keeping.  But  when 
the  second  hour  was  nearly  gone,  his  feeling 
was  one  of  anxiety  for  the  boss,  until  a  ques- 
tion to  the  shop-keeper  led  to  the  opening  of 
the  bag  and  the  discovery  that  it  contained 
some  old  newspapers  and  nothing  more. 

He  went  back  to  the  farm  then  and  worked 
all  winter  and  through  the  summer  that  was 
now  nearing  its  end,  but  illness  in  his  family 
had  consumed  his  earnings,  and,  at  the  end  of 
fourteen  years  of  labor,  he  was  very  much 
where  he  started  as  a  lad,  apart  from  added 
strength  and  experience. 

That  evening,  in  a  village  inn,  while  the 


102  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

rain  poured  without,  I  sat  cheek  by  jowl  witli  a 
Knight  Templar  who  had  just  returned  from  a 
convention  of  his  order  in  Denver.  It  was 
not  the  meeting  that  now  inspired  him ;  it  was 
the  mountains.  Reared  on  the  prairie,  he  had 
never  seen  even  hills  before,  and  the  sight  of 
the  earth  rising  from  a  plain  until  it  touched 
high  heaven  was  like  giving  to  his  mind  the 
sense  of  a  new  dimension.  For  hours,  he  said, 
he  would  let  his  eyes  wander  from  Long's  Peak 
to  Pike's  and  back  again,  while  his  imagina- 
tion lost  itself  among  the  gorges  and  dark 
canons,  and  in  the  midsummer  glitter  of  aged 
snow.  There  lay  the  charm  of  it,  in  the  plain 
telling  of  the  opening  to  him  of  a  world  of 
majesty  and  beauty  such  as  he  had  never 
dreamed  of,  revealing  powers  of  reverence  and 
admiration  that  he  had  not  known  were  his. 

The  humor  of  it,  touched  with  charm,  was 
all  in  his  description  of  concrete  experience  of 
the  new  world  of  mystery.  His  account  of  an 
ascent  of  Pike's  Peak  would  have  made  the 
reputation  of  a  "humorist.  An  expedition  to 
the  Pole  could  hardly  take  itself  more  seri- 
ously.    A  few  of  his  fellow-knights  and  he, 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  103 

with  the  ladies  who  were  of  their  company,  set 
out  at  midnight  from  Manitou  to  make  sure 
of  reaching  the  summit  (a  four  hours'  walk) 
before  dark  of  the  following  day.  Not  "  the 
steep  ascent  of  heaven  "  is  beset  with  greater 
difficulty  and  danger  for  a  struggling  saint 
than  was  the  climb  along  the  line  of  a  "  cog  " 
railway  for  this  band  of  knights-errant  and 
ladies  fair.  One  can  readily  conceive  the  peril 
of  the  adventure — for  feet  accustomed  only  to 
the  prairie — in  treading  from  midnight  until 
dawn  the  brinks  of  yawning  chasms,  with 
water  falling  in  the  dark. 

Nor  did  day  dispel  the  terrors.  The  preci- 
pices were  still  there  and  a  growing  awf ulness 
in  the  height  above  the  plain  that  caused  a 
"  giddiness  "  which  was  the  harder  to  resist 
because  of  the  increasing  difficulty  of  breath- 
ing the  rarefied  air.  Some  of  the  women 
fainted  on  the  way,  and  the  last  hour's  climb 
was  an  agony  to  all  the  company;  for  now  the 
effort  of  a  few  steps  exhausted  them,  and  they 
despaired  of  ever  reaching  the  goal. 

It  was  past  noon  when  finally  they  sank 
down  at  the  summit  in  the  shelter  of  rocks  that 


104  A   SEOTION-HAND   ON   THE 

shielded  them  from  the  piercing  wind  and  ate 
what  was  left  of  their  store  of  provision. 

The  unconscious  exaggeration  took  now  a 
form  even  more  comical  in  an  account  of  what 
was  visible  from  the  mountain.  I  have  heard, 
in  a  national  convention,  a  young  negro  from 
Texas  second  the  nomination  of  a  party  leader 
with  a  fervor  and  in  terms  that  might  befit  an 
archangel.  The  play  of  fancy  about  Pike's 
Peak  was  comparable  with  it,  not  in  eloquence, 
perhaps,  but  certainly  in  a  pitch  which  made 
both  speeches  memorable  as  gems  of  unstudied 
humor 

From  Thursday  afternoon,  when  I  left 
Omaha,  until  Saturday  evening,  I  walked  as 
far  as  Columbus,  then  rested  over  Sunday. 
On  Monday  morning  the  course  was  still  the 
line  of  the  Union  Pacific,  which  had  now 
turned  south  westward  in  following  the  bank  of 
the  river. 

Tuesday's  march  was  the  longest  that  I  had 
made  so  far.  From  a  point  near  Clarksville  I 
went  to  one  a  little  beyond  Grand  Island, 
which  was,  I  judged,  about  forty  miles  in  all; 
but  as  various  lifts  had  carried  me  quite  a  fifth 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  105 

of  the  way,  the  actual  walking  was  not  much 
above  the  normal  amount. 

On  Wednesday  morning,  August  24th,  my 
funds  were  low.  I  saw  the  way  to  a  dinner  in 
the  middle  of  the  day,  but  to  no  supper  or  bed 
at  night.  Settling  down  to  work  would  now 
be  a  welcome  change,  however,  after  hard 
walking,  just  as  I  always  found  the  life  of  the 
road  a  grateful  relief,  at  first,  from  the  strain 
of  heavy  labor. 

After  dinner  I  began  to  think  of  something 
to  do.  It  would  be  easy  to  apply  for  work 
upon  some  of  the  many  farms  that  I  was  pass- 
ing, and  not  difficult  to  find  it,  I  fancied,  from 
the  reports  of  the  farmers  with  whom  I  had 
talked  on  the  road  from  Omaha.  Still,  I  had 
had  a  little  experience  as  a  farm-hand  and  I 
wished  to  extend  the  range  of  the  experiment 
as  far  as  I  could  within  the  limits  of  unskilled 
labor,  so  I  thought  again. 

I  was  a  little  beyond  the  town  of  Gibbon. 
It  was  a  hot  August  afternoon,  and  glancing 
down  the  line  I  saw  a  gang  of  section-hands  at 
work,  the  air  rising  in  quivering  heat-waves 
about  them,  and  the  glint  of  the  sunshine  on 


106  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

the  rails.  "WTien  I  reached  them  I  could 
easily  pick  out  the  boss,  a  white-haired,  smooth- 
shaven,  ruddy  Irishman  with  a  clear  blue  eye, 
and,  as  it  proved,  -a  tongue  as  genial  as  it  was 
coarse.  Two  of  his  sons  were  of  the  gang,  well- 
grown  lads,  scarcely  out  of  their  teens,  dark, 
good-looking,  and  reserved.  He  told  me  that 
they  were  his  sons,  and  he  gave  me  much  in- 
formation besides;  for  my  applying  for  a  job 
had  been  a  signal  to  the  whole  gang  to  quit 
work  and  soberly  chew  the  cud  of  the  situa- 
tion, while  the  old  man  gossiped.  The  fourth 
hand  was  a  slovenly  youth,  who  stood  content- 
edly leaning  on  his  shovel  and  listening  idly  to 
what  was  said. 

l!^o,  the  boss  could  not  give  me  work;  he 
already  had  the  full  number  of  men,  but  he 
knew  that  the  gang  of  the  next  section  to  the 
west  was  short  a  man  when  he  saw  them  last, 
and  he  thought  that  my  chance  of  employment 
with  them  was  good. 

I  walked  something  more  than  three  miles 
into  the  next  section,  which  was  the  Thirty- 
second,  before  I  came  up  with  the  gang  that 
worked  it.     They  were  three  men  when  I 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  107 

found  them  and  they  were  bracing  the  sleepers 
near  a  little  station  which  is  known  as  Buda. 
I  went  up  to  them  and  asked  for  Osborn,  the 
boss,  and  was  answered  by  a  tall,  frank-eyed 
young  Westerner  of  unmistakable  native 
birth. 

Osborn  owned  at  once  to  being  short-handed 
and  said  that  I  might  go  to  work  next  morn- 
ing, if  I  wished,  and  then  went  on,  in  business- 
like fashion,  to  explain  that  the  wages  were 
twelve  and  a  half  cents  an  hour  for  ten  hours' 
work  and  that  his  wife  would  board  me  for 
three  dollars  and  a  half  a  week. 

"  Very  well,"  I  said,  "  I'll  take  the  job." 

"  You  can  go  right  over  to  the  house,"  he 
went  on,  "  or  wait  here  and  go  home  with  us  at 
six  o'clock." 

I  much  preferred  to  wait  and  leave  explana- 
tions to  the  boss,  for  my  attempts  at  explaining 
myself  to  the  women  folk  of  my  employers 
had  not  always  ended  in  leaving  me  perfectly 
at  ease. 

The  present  situation  could  be  taken  in  at  a 
glance.  Four  miles  farther  on  the  road  was 
the  town  of  Kearney,  built  out,  for  the  most 


108  A  SECTION-HAND   ON  THE 

part,  to  the  north  of  the  line.  The  station  at 
Buda  was  the  conventional  frame  building, 
with  a  pen  for  cattle  at  one  end  and  a  fenced 
platform  for  transferring  the  stock  to  the 
cattle-cars.  A  siding  ran  for  a  hundred  yards 
or  more  beside  the  main  line,  and  a  few  steps 
beyond  it  and  across  the  main  travelled  road 
was  the  section-boss's  shanty,  a  lightly  built 
wooden  shell,  unpainted  and  weather-stained, 
l^ear  an  end  of  the  siding,  with  a  few  feet  of 
rails  spanning  the  distance  between,  stood  a 
little  structure  not  unlike  an  overgrown  ken- 
nel, where  the  hand-car  for  the  men  and  the 
section  tools  were  housed.  For  a  space  about 
the  station  and  the  boss's  shanty  and  on  either 
side  the  railway  and  the  road  it  was  clear,  then 
began  the  inevitable  corn  that  stood  full-grown 
on  the  prairie  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see. 

The  shadow  of  the  station  lay  across  the 
high  prairie  grass  under  its  eastern  wall,  and 
there  I  lay  down  to  rest. 

If  I  had  failed  of  work  at  Buda,  I  should 
have  thought  little  of  it  and  should  have 
walked  on  as  a  matter  of  course  to  further 
search  in  Kearney  or  in  the  country  about  the 


UNION  PACIFIC   RAILWAY  109 

town.  But  having  found  a  job  and  knowing 
that  I  had  only  to  rest  until  going  to  work  in 
the  morning,  there  came  a  feeling  of  languor 
which  it  was  a  luxury  to  indulge.  As  I  lay 
there  in  the  high  prairie  grass  at  the  end  of  an- 
other stretch  of  nearly  200  miles  of  walking, 
and  looked  dreamily  up  at  the  sky  and  thought 
contentedly  of  my  new  post,  every  muscle  re- 
laxed, and  the  will  to  summon  them  to  action 
seemed  gone,  until  the  mere  thought  of  further 
effort  for  that  day  was  an  agony  which  one 
harbored  for  the  edge  it  gave  to  the  sense  of 
ease. 

It  was  difficult  to  respond  even  to  a  call  to 
supper.  But  I  got  to  my  feet  at  six  o'clock 
and  joined  the  gang,  and  together,  after  stor- 
ing the  tools,  we  walked  over  to  the  boss's 
shanty.  On  a  bench  outside  the  kitchen-door 
were  tin  basins  and  soap  and  water,  with  the 
usual  roller  towel,  and  soon  we  were  waiting 
for  a  summons  to  the  evening  meal. 

Already  I  was  much  attracted  by  Osbom 
and  the  section-hands.  Tyler  was  a  young 
American,  a  long-limbed  youth  with  clear 
smooth  muscles  and  an  intelligent,  expressive 


110  A   SECTION-HAND   ON  THE 

face  that  suggested  breeding,  while  Sullivan 
was  a  full-faced,  stocky  Irishman,  of  five- 
and-twenty,  ready  and  frank,  and  full  of 
energy. 

The  shop  that  they  talked  as  we  waited  out- 
side was  still  the  topic  at  the  table  when  we 
were  called  to  supper  in  the  little  front  room 
of  the  cabin  with  its  wooden  walls  papered 
with  old  journals.  Never  had  I  been  adopted 
more  naturally  by  any  company  of  fellow- 
workmen.  They  asked  my  name  and  where  I 
was  from,  and  having  learned  that  I  had  come 
from  the  East,  they  appeared  satisfied  with  the 
account  of  myself  and  made  me  one  of  their 
number  with  perfect  friendliness.  Osbom's 
father,  a  quiet  old  farmer,  joined  us,  but  we 
saw  the  women  and  children  only  as  we  passed 
through  the  kitchen.  Osbom's  mother  was 
there  with  her  daughter-in-law  and  in  one  or 
other  of  them,  perhaps  in  both,  there  was  a 
singularly  good  cook  and  housekeeper. 

One  could  see  instantly  the  cleanliness  of 
the  house  for  all  its  shabbiness,  and  the  supper 
to  which  we  sat  down  was  not  only  clean,  but 
bountiful  and  good.     We  had  soup  and  boiled 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  111 

chicken,  with  rich  gravy,  and  potatoes  and 
steaming  green  corn,  besides  white  bread  of 
the  rarest  and  a  sauce  for  dessert.  I  looked 
with  a  livelier  interest  at  the  women  as  we 
passed  out,  and  I  saw  in  the  elder  one  a  serene, 
sweet-faced,  old  farmer's  wife,  so  trim  and 
neat  that  she  might  have  stepped  from  a  New 
England  country  side,  while  the  younger  wo- 
man, in  her  abounding  vigor,  appeared  rather 
a  product  of  the  West. 

Osbom  and  Tyler  had  turned  the  talk  at 
supper  to  something  that  attracted  them  to 
Kearney  for  the  evening,  and  almost  immedi- 
ately when  the  meal  was  ended  they  hitched 
an  Indian  pony  that  was  Osbom's  to  a  light, 
rickety  sulky  and  drove  to  town.  Sullivan 
and  I  were  left  alone,  for  the  old  farmer  had 
disappeared.  We  lit  our  pipes  and  sat  down 
in  the  prairie  grass  with  our  eyes  to  the  sunset. 
The  horizon  was  aglow  with  crimson  and  gold 
that  faded  to  a  clear,  cold  green  before  chang- 
ing to  the  purple  in  which  the  evening  star 
was  set.  The  keen  gleam  of  electrics  flashed 
out  over  the  town,  and  a  breeze  rustled  faintly 
among  the  crisping  blades  of  com. 


112  A  SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

Sullivan  and  I  sat  smoking  lazily  in  the  twi- 
light. He  had  begun  to  tell  me  about  himself, 
and  my  spirits  were  rising,  for  it  was  no  fur- 
bished tale  that  I  heard. 

There  is  little  marvel  in  leading  men  to  talk 
of  themselves,  and  workingmen  are  no  excep- 
tion ;  but  there  is  a  difference,  which  is  all  the 
difference  in  the  world,  between  a  narrative 
that  is  evidently  inspired  by  the  hope  of  im- 
pressing you,  and  one  that  is  a  spontaneous  self- 
revelation. 

Sullivan  was  such  another  waif  as  Farrell, 
but  older,  and  with  not  so  fair  a  chance  of  set- 
tling ever  into  the  framework  of  conventional 
living.  Twice  he  had  crossed  the  Atlantic  as 
a  deck-hand  on  a  cattle-ship,  and,  therefore,  he 
knew  the  nether  depths  of  depravity,  but  he 
boasted  nothing  of  his  knowledge.  Once 
only,  there  came  into  his  voice  a  note  of  exul- 
tation. It  was  at  the  end  of  an  account  of  a 
thirty  days'  term  that  he  once  served  in  the 
Bridewell,  at  Chicago.  The  description  was 
admirable,  for  the  memory  of  it  was  strong 
upon  him,  and  he  imconsciously  made  you  see 
the  prison  and  the  keepers,  and  the  flocking  of 


UNION  PACIFIC   BAILWAY  113 

the  prisoners  into  the  inner  court  in  the  morn- 
ing, each  from  his  separate  cell. 

"  They  knowed  me  there  for  Cuckoo  Sul- 
livan," he  said,  "  which  was  the  name  the  cops 
in  Chicago  give  me;  and  I  guess  they'd  know 
yet  who  you  was  after,  if  you  asked  at  the 
Harrison  Street  Station  for  Cuckoo  Sullivan." 

We  moved  presently  to  a  little  platform 
near  the  line  and  were  sitting  on  the  steps 
smoking  contentedly  while  there  came  to  us 
the  soughing  of  the  night  air  in  the  com. 
Sullivan  was  telling  me  of  a  long  stay  in  Okla- 
homa and  the  Indian  Territory,  of  the  wild 
days  of  the  opening  of  the  reservation,  and 
wilder  days,  when,  with  other  adventurers,  he 
roamed  the  new  lands  and  lived  at  give  and 
take  with  strange  fortune.  He  told  me  of  his 
loves,  and  they  were  many  and  some  of  them 
were  dusky;  and  of  the  fights  that  he  had 
fought,  not  all  of  them  good;  and  how,  finally, 
he  had  drifted  north  again  as  far  as  Scotia, 
Neb.,  and  had  worked  there  as  a  section-hand 
before  coming  to  Buda. 

Sullivan  and  I  were  friends  when  we  turned 
in  that  night  to  our  cots  in  the  attic  under  the 


114  A  SECTION-HAND  ON  THE 

shanty  roof.  IsText  morning  Osborn  paired  us 
as  partners,  when  the  day's  work  began.  On 
the. stroke  of  seven  we  four  opened  the  tool- 
house  and  loaded  the  car  with  the  crowbars 
and  wrenches  and  picks  and  shovels  that  would 
be  needed,  then  placing  our  dinner  pails  on 
top,  we  ran  the  car  out  to  the  line  and  lifted  it 
into  position.  % 

Twenty  years  earlier  our  predecessors,  who 
laid  the  line  and  who  used  the  same  tool-house, 
took  with  them  each  a  rifle  every  day  in  readi- 
ness for  attacks  of  Indians.  The  worn  sockets 
and  rests  were  still  to  be  seen,  where  the  rifles 
had  stood  at  night  against  an  inner  wall.  Giv- 
ing the  car  a  start  in  the  direction  of  Kearney 
we  jumped  aboard,  and  each  taking  a  handle 
of  the  crank,  we  were  soon  flying  over  the  rails. 
The  sun  was  obscured,  the  early  morning  air 
was  cool,  and  the  rapid  movement  exhilarat- 
ing, so  that  the  first  impression  of  the  job 
was  a  jolly  one.  But  pumping  a  hand-car  is 
not  the  whole  of  a  navvy's  work.  Soon  we 
reached  the  western  end  of  our  section,  where 
there  met  us  on  their  car  the  gang  of  the  sec- 
tion next  our  own.     Osborn  had  some  talk 


UNION  PACIFIC   RAILWAY  115 

with  the  other  boss  about  certain  details  of  the 
work,  then  lifting  the  ear  from  the  line,  we 
settled  to  the  day's  task.  Osborn  and  Tyler 
worked  together  and  Sullivan  and  I.  Sul- 
livan seemed  not  to  mind  having  a  green  hand 
to  break  in,  for  he  set  about  it  with  energy  and 
not  a  little  skill.  There  were  sunken  sleepers 
that  had  to  be  raised  and  tamped,  and  new 
coupling  bars  put  in  to  replace  those  that  had 
split,  and  spikes  to  be  driven  where  the  old 
ones  were  loose,  and  nuts  to  be  tightened  that 
were  working  free  of  their  bolts. 

Five  hours  on  end  of  this  were  fatiguing;  it 
was  the  drill,  drill  of  rough  manual  labor,  but 
with  the  difference  of  some  variety,  and  there 
could  not  have  been  a  better  partner  than  Sul- 
livan. He  taught  me  how  to  tamp  about  the 
sleepers  and  put  the  new  bars  in  place  and 
tighten  the  nuts,  but  the  noon  signal  was  wel- 
come as  we  heard  it  sounded  by  the  steam  whis- 
tles in  Kearney. 

"We  joined  Osborn  and  Tyler  then,  and  tak- 
ing our  dinner-pails  from  the  hand-car,  we  all 
sat  down  in  the  prairie  grass,  settling  ourselves 
to  an  hour  of  keen  enjoyment.     Slices  of  bread 


116  A  SECTION-HAND  ON  THE 

and  cold  meat  and  a  bit  of  sausage  and  a  piece 
of  pie  and  cheese  with  cold  tea,  made  up  each 
man's  ration  and  laid  the  foundation  for  a 
smoke.  Rough  hand  labor  is  always  hard, 
however  trained  to  it  one's  muscles  may  have 
been,  and  ten  hours  of  it  daily  are  apt  to  have 
a  deadening  effect  upon  the  mind,  and  time 
drags  heavily  to  the  end.  Yet,  when  the 
nooning  is  reached,  or  the  day's  work  is  done, 
there  come  with  meat  and  drink  a  feeling  of 
renewal  that  others  cannot  know  as  working- 
men  know  it,  and  a  solace  in  tobacco  that  is 
the  very  lap  of  ease. 

As  we  lay  there  in  the  prairie  grass,  our  eyes 
following,  dreamily,  the  smoke  as  it  curled  in 
the  warm  sunlight,  the  talk  drifting  aimlessly, 
eddying  now  and  then  about  a  topic  that  held 
it  for  a  moment,  then  flowing  free  again. 
Once  it  came  my  way. 
^'  When  you  was  living  East,  did  you  ever 
go  to  New  York?  "  asked  the  boss. 

"  Yes,  quite  often,"  I  said. 

"  Was  you  ever  in  Wall  Street? " 

"  Many  times.'* 

"  Well,  that's  where  them  "  (I  omit  the  in- 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  117 

trevening  qualifying  terms)  "  bloated  bond- 
holders lives  that  we  poor  devils  out  here  has 
to  work  for." 

It  was  not  worth  while  to  explain  that  Wall 
Street  is  not  a  residence  quarter,  but  the  state- 
ment had  an  interest  of  its  own,  and  so  I 
probed  the  boss  for  what  lay  under  it.  There 
was  nothing,  apparently,  beyond  a  vague  sense 
of  injustice  which  had  bred  a  feeling  of  hatred 
for  a  class  that  the  Free  Silver  agitation  had 
taught  him  to  call  "  money  lords."  These 
were  a  company  of  men  who  had  got  control 
of  the  "  money  market "  and  lived,  conse- 
quently, in  much  splendor,  in  Wall  Street,  at 
the  expense  of  the  "  producing  classes,"  which 
appeared  to  consist  solely  of  those  who  work 
with  their  hands  on  their  own  account  or  for 
day's  wages. 

The  idea  would  have  been  not  in  the  least 
surprising  had  it  come  from  a  fellow-laborer 
in  a  town,  where  some  wave  of  well-defined 
revolutionary  agitation  might  have  touched 
him,  but  coming  from  a  native-born  farmer's 
son,  grown  to  a  section-boss,  it  served  to  deepen 
the  wonder  that  one  felt  in  finding  so  often 


118  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

among  an  agrarian  population  the  beginnings 
of  revolutionary  doctrine. 

Sullivan  did  not  share  the  boss's  views. 
"  Money  lords  "  and  "  the  producing  classes  " 
were  but  idle  words  to  him.  Life  was  a  mat- 
ter of  working  or  loafing.  If  you  labored 
with  your  hands,  yours  was  the  bondage  of 
work;  if  not,  you  had  escaped  the  primal  curse. 
His  philosophy  was  luminous  in  a  single  sen- 
tence while  we  were  at  work  in  the  afternoon. 

It  was  late  in  the  day,  but  still  very  hot,  for 
the  clouds  had  melted  in  the  morning  and  the 
sun  gained  in  strength  as  the  day  passed,  and 
no  breeze  came  to  stir  the  sweltering  air.  We 
were  employed  now  near  the  eastern  end  of 
the  section,  where  some  regrading  was  neces- 
sary because  of  weakening  in  the  road-bed. 
Sullivan  and  I  were  together  as  before.  It 
was  pick  and  shovel  labor,  and,  because  of 
some  earlier  experience,  I  did  not  need  much 
coaching,  so  that  we  were  working  in  silence 
for  the  most  part,  except  that  Sullivan  now 
and  then  would  burst  into  song.  But  his 
snatches  of  song  grew  rarer  as  the  afternoon 
wore  away  and  as  the  muscles  in  oui:  backs  pro- 


UNION   PACIFIC   RAILWAY  119 

tested  the  more  against  the  continued  strain. 
With  leaden  feet  the  minutes  plodded  slowly 
past,  sixty  minutes  to  the  hour  and  five  hours 
of  unbroken  toil.  Like  Joshua's  moon  at 
Ajalon,  the  sun  seemed  to  stand  at  gaze,  and, 
from  the  mid-western  sky,  transfijced  us  with 
his  heat.  Five  o'clock  came,  and  the  next 
hour  stretched  before  us  in  almost  intolerable 
length.  For  some  time  Sullivan  had  been 
silent,  drudging  doggedly  on.  Now,  I  saw 
him  draw  himself  slowly  erect,  rubbing  with 
one  hand,  meanwhile,  the  small  of  his  back, 
while  his  face  expressed  comically  the  pain  he 
felt,  and  then  he  said,  and  I  wish  that  I  could 
suggest  the  rich  Irish  brogue  with  which  he 
said  it: 

"  Ach,  I'm  that  sorry  that  I  didn't  study  for 
the  ministry." 

Two  days  later  the  gang  from  the  next  sec- 
tion to  the  east  joined  us  in  the  afternoon,  and 
together  we  put  in  a  new  "  frog  "  in  the  switch 
near  the  Buda  station.  They  were  the  Irish 
boss  with  his  two  sons  and  the  taciturn  hand  of 
the  farm-laborer  type.  The  boss  remembered 
me  instantly  and  commented  favorably  on  my 


120  A   SECTION-HAND   ON  THE 

having  taken  his  advice  in  applying  to  Osbom 
for  a  job. 

The  point  of  our  joining  forces  was  in  the 
necessity  of  laying  the  frog  without  interfer- 
ing with  traffic.  Osborn  had  chosen  the  hour 
in  the  day  when  there  was  the  longest  interval 
between  trains,  and  we  had  everything  in 
readiness  when,  at  the  appointed  time,  the 
other  gang  met  us,  so  that  with  our  united 
labor  the  frog  was  in  place  and  secure  when 
the  next  train  passed. 

Much  of  the  talk  between  the  bosses  at  this 
time  referred  to  a  later  meeting,  when,  on  an 
appointed  day,  the  gangs  for  many  miles  along 
the  line  were  to  foregather  at  Grand  Island 
under  the  Division-Superintendent's  orders. 
There  was  to  be  a  general  distribution  then  of 
new  sleepers  along  the  railway. 

What  interested  me  most  at  the  moment 
was  the  tone  of  the  men  in  speaking  of  their 
superior  in  the  service.  I  had  caught  it  fre- 
quently in  earlier  references  to  the  Superin- 
tendent among  ourselves.  He  was  the  official 
in  command  of  all  the  section-gangs  in  the  di- 
vision and  directly  responsible  for  the  condi- 
tion of  the  road. 


UNION  PACIFIC   RAILWAY  121 

The  men  told  me  that  he  had  been  a  section- 
hand  himself  and  then  a  boss,  and  that  he  had 
worked  his  way  to  the  position  of  superinten- 
dent in  a  long  service  with  the  company.  The 
feeling  that  they  bore  him  was  one  of  admira- 
tion, not  unmixed  with  fear.  They  respected 
his  knowledge  of  every  detail  of  their  work, 
and  a  certain  liking  for  him  grew  out  of  the 
fact  of  his  having  been  a  laborer  like  them- 
selves, but  they  feared  him  with  an  awesome 
fear. 

I  remember  his  passing  one  afternoon  while 
we  were  at  work.  We  had  stood  aside  at  the 
coming  of  a  freight  train,  and,  as  we  stepped 
back  to  our  work,  we  caught  sight  of  a  wiry 
little  man  standing  on  the  rear  platform  of 
the  caboose,  his  hands  clasping  the  railing  and 
his  eyes  intent  on  the  road-bed.  Osborn 
thought  that  he  saw  the  flutter  of  a  piece  of 
paper  in  the  dust  raised  by  the  passing  train, 
and  suspecting  that  it  was  an  order  for  himself, 
he  dropped  his  tools  and  searched  the  embank- 
ment, and  even  the  neighboring  cornfield  to 
the  leeward,  with  an  eagerness  that  might  have 
marked  a  hunt  for  hid  treasure.     He  could 


122  A   SECTION-HAND   ON   THE 

find  nothing,  however,  and  for  the  rest  of  the 
day,  and  I  know  not  for  how  much  longer, 
the  incident  was  upon  his  mind  with  a  sense 
of  keen  anxiety. 

When  the  day  appointed  for  distributing  the 
sleepers  came,  we  boarded  at  Buda  an  east- 
bound  passenger  train,  and  were  pressed  into 
a  smoking-car  already  overcrowded  by  bosses 
and  section-hands.  Osbom  vouched  for  us  to 
the  conductor,  as  the  other  bosses  did  for  their 
men  when  we  picked  up  a  gang  at  almost  every 
station. 

It  was  a  welcome  escape  to  get  off  at 
Grand  Island.  Like  boys  set  free  from  school 
we  clambered  over  the  long  freight-train,  laden 
with  sleepers,  that  stood  waiting  for  us  on  a 
siding.  Our  orders  were  perfectly  clear. 
We  were  to  distribute  ourselves  through  the 
train  and,  at  a  given  signal,  to  unlade  the 
sleepers  as  fast  as  we  could,  throwing  them 
along  the  road-bed  well  free  of  the  line.  Each 
man  was  to  remember,  moreover,  that,  at  the 
end  of  his  own  section,  he  was  to  leave  the 
train. 

I  found  myself  in  a  box-car  with  three  other 


UNION  PACIFIC  RAILWAY  123 

navvies,  all  strangers  to  me.  Sleepers  lay 
piled  to  the  roof  from  end  to  end  of  the  floor, 
with  only  a  passage  across  the  middle  wide 
enough  for  us  to  begin  the  work.  A  blue- 
eyed  young  Swede  and  I  had  just  agreed  to  be 
partners  when  the  Superintendent  passed  in 
his  way  along  the  train,  noting  the  number  of 
men  in  each  car. 

In  a  few  moments  we  were  off,  and  we  had 
not  gone  far  before  the  prearranged  signal 
came.  Then  we  bent  to  the  work  with  a  will. 
It  was  a  break  in  the  regular  routine  and  we 
took  it  as  a  lark.  Two  men  attacked  one  side 
of  the  passage  and  the  Swede  and  I  the  other. 
Soon  it  was  a  race  between  us  to  see  which 
could  unload  the  faster. 

The  train  moved  slowly,  discharging  sleep- 
ers that  piled  themselves  in  grotesque  confu- 
sion along  the  sides  of  the  embankment,  while 
above  the  noise  of  the  cars,  rose  the  voices  of 
the  men  as  they  shouted  excitedly  in  the  un- 
wonted rivalry. 

Before  I  realized  that  we  had  gone  half  so 
far,  I  caught  sight  of  the  Buda  station.  Our 
car  was  nearly  empty,  and  as  nearly  empty  at 


124  A  SECTION-HAND   ON  THE 

our  end  as  at  the  other,  the  Swede  and  I 
thought,  but  our  fellow-nawies  claimed  a  vic- 
tory when,  at  the  end  of  the  section,  I  jumped 
to  the  ground  with  much  care  to  avoid  the  fly- 
ing sleepers.  Osbom  was  there,  and  soon  the 
other  members  of  the  gang  gathered,  and  then 
we  returned  to  the  usual  work  until  six  o'clock. 

For  two  weeks  or  more  I  remained  at  work 
on  this  section,  then  I  knew  that  I  must  be 
going;  for  the  autumn  was  at  hand,  and  I 
aimed  to  cross  the  Kockies  and  reach  the 
milder  climate  of  the  Southwest  by  the  be- 
ginning of  winter.  But  the  actual  parting 
with  the  gang  presented  the  usual  embarrass- 
ments. I  had  become  used  to  the  men,  and 
they  to  me,  and  we  worked  together  har- 
moniously and  were  on  terms  of  easiest  friend- 
liness. Besides,  no  one  had  appeared  who 
would  take  my  place,  and  there  were  many 
sleepers  to  be  laid. 

I  always  stipulated  with  my  employers  at 
the  beginning  of  an  engagement  that  I  wished 
to  be  free  to  go  when  I  pleased,  as  they  were 
free  to  discharge  me  when  they  wished,  but 
this  rarely  smoothed  the  way  of  going,  for  they 


UNION  PACIFIC  RAILWAY  125 

lost  sight  of  the  agreement  as  they  grew  accus- 
tomed to  me  as  a  hand. 

When  I  told  Osbom  one  evening  that  I 
must  be  gone  in  a  day  or  two,  his  eyes  took  on 
a  look  of  perplexity  that  did  not  relieve  my  em- 
barrassment, and  he  began  to  plead  the  press- 
ure of  the  work  and  the  difficulty  of  getting 
section-hands  until  I  felt  like  a  deserter.  But 
there  was  no  help  for  it,  and  early  one  Septem- 
ber morning,  after  reluctant  good-byes  to  the 
family  and  the  men,  I  set  off  down  the  line 
with  my  wages  in  one  pocket  and  in  another  a 
luncheon  that  the  boss's  mother  put  up  for  me. 

When  the  sun  was  setting  that  evening,  I 
had  entered  a  re^on  where  the  cornfields  were 
fewer,  where  the  cattle  country  had  begun, 
and  the  alkali  shone  white  in  the  soil,  and  the 
bones  of  dead  cattle  lay  bleaching  on  the  plain. 


"A  BURRO-PUNCHER" 


"A  BURRO-PUNCHER *' 

MIKE  PKICE  was  a  prospector  by  nat- 
ure; his  prospecting  through  the  sum- 
mer and  autumn  of  1892  in  the  Wagon 
Wheel  Gap  country  of  southwestern  Colo- 
rado was  a  mere  incident  in  a  long  career. 
Phoenix,  Ariz.,  was  his  head-quarters,  and  he 
would  fain  return  there  for  the  Indian  sum- 
mer of  its  winter  climate;  for  he  hated  snow 
and  the  hard  cold  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 
camps,  where,  as  he  said,  a  man  must  hibernate 
until  spring.  But  Phoenix  was  the  best  part 
of  600  miles  away  across  a  thinly  settled  fron- 
tier. Burros  and  blankets  and  food  for  the 
journey  were  to  be  had  only  for  ready  money, 
and  Price  had  not  "  struck  it  rich";  indeed, 
he  had  not  struck  it  at  all.  One  after  another 
the  parts  of  his  camping  outfit  had  gone  into 
a  pawnbroker's  shop  at  Creede,  in  the  progress 

of  a  luckless  season,  until  the  late  autumn 
129 


130  "a  buero-punchek " 

found  him  without  burro  or  blanket  or  bacon, 
and  bereft  even  of  the  "  gun  "  (a  six-shooter) 
which  General had  given  him  in  rec- 
ognition of  his  services  as  a  scout. 

It  was  late  November  when  I  met  him,  and 
Price  was  making  a  precarious  living  at  odd 
jobs  for  civil  engineers.  One  of  these  was  my 
friend  Hamilton,  who  had  known  Price  for 
years  and  who  proved  himself  a  friend  in  need 
to  both  of  us,  for  he  brought  us  together  and 
proposed  the  journey  which  took  us  to  Phoenix, 
and  which  gave  me  six  weeks'  experience  as  a 
"  burro-puncher." 

You  could  trust  Hamilton  to  find  a  way  out. 
There  is  scarcely  a  phase  of  frontier  life  that 
he  did  not  know  from  personal  experience, 
and  he  saw  at  a  glance  that  Price's  position  and 
my  own  would  exactly  complement  each  other 
in  furthering  a  plan  which  was  common  to  us 
both.  Price  wanted  to  reach  Phoenix,  and  so 
did  I;  he  knew  the  way  but  was  without  the 
means  of  travel,  while  I,  knowing  nothing  of 
the  country,  yet  had  some  store  of  savings. 

Wages  were  high  at  Creede.  The  miners 
were  getting  $3,  and  I,  as  an  unskilled  laborer, 


"a  burko-puncher "  131 

working  with  a  gang  that  was  cutting  a  road 
down  Bachelor  Mountain  from  the  New  York 
Chance  Mine  to  Creede,  was  paid  $2.50  a  day. 
Our  board  and  lodging  cost  us  $7  a  week,  but 
they  were  worth  it,  and,  even  at  that  rate, 
there  remained  a  considerable  margin  for  pos- 
sible saving. 

Hamilton  knew  my  plans;  he  was  one  of  the 
few  whom  I  had  told,  in  the  course  of  my  wan- 
dering, of  the  object  of  the  expedition.  We 
had  been  spending  an  evening  with  a  company 
of  kindred  Bohemians  at  the  house  of  a  mine 
superintendent,  and  were  returning  together 
to  his  quarters  in  the  quiet  of  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning  through  a  world  white  with  the 
first  snow  of  winter  and  dazzling  under  a  full 
moon. 

I  had  money  enough  to  take  me  to  Phoenix 
by  rail,  and  it  seemed  the  height  of  folly  to  go 
in  any  other  way,  so  I  began  to  explain  why  I 
wished  to  walk  and  why  I  had  already  walked 
most  of  the  way  from  the  Atlantic.  Hamil- 
ton listened  patiently,  but  without  interest,  I 
thought,  until  abruptly  he  turned  upon  me 
with  approval,  immeasurably  beyond  my  de- 


132  "a  burro-punciier '" 

sert,  yet  showing  so  sympathetic  an  insight 
into  the  possible  service  of  such  work,  that  I 
saw  again,  as  by  a  flash,  the  rich  human  qual- 
ity that  had  already  endeared  the  man. 

"  And  so  you  worked  with  the  road  gang 
on  Bachelor  Mountain  to  get  enough  to  grub 
stake  you  to  Phcenix? "  he  said,  and  he 
laughed  aloud.  Then  he  swore — deeply,  res- 
onantly, and  from  the  heart. 

Price  was  sent  for  on  the  next  day,  and,  in 
the  afternoon,  he  turned  up  in  Hamilton's 
office,  a  dark,  bearded,  keen-eyed  Irishman, 
slender  and  wiry,  and  all  alert  at  the  prospect 
of  getting  back  to  "  God's  country,"  which  in 
his  phrase  meant  Arizona.  Soon,  not  merely 
Hamilton  and  I,  but  our  friends  the  barrister 
and  the  editor  and  the  grave  mine  superinten- 
dent were  involved  in  preparation  for  the  trip. 
We  accompanied  Price  to  the  pawnbroker's 
shop,  where  he  identified  his  belongings,  and  I 
redeemed  them.  Then  we  all  set  about  select- 
ing additional  blankets  and  a  fresh  store  of 
food. 

Our  pack  animals  could  not  have  carried 
their  loads,  had  we  taken  all  that  was  pressed 


"A  burro-puncher"  133 

upon  us  for  the  journey.  Price  borrowed  a 
shot-gun  from  the  private  arsenal  that  was  put 
at  oiu*  disposal,  and  I  a  six-shooter,  and  we 
gladly  accepted  gifts  of  tobacco  until  our  pock- 
ets were  bursting  with  plenty. 

Weird  as  it  was,  our  little  caravan  was  but 
the  typical  prospector's  outfit  as  we  moved  in 
single  file  through  the  winding  street  of  the 
mining  camp,  an  object  of  interest  only  to  the 
four  friends  who  bade  us  good-by  with  many 
slaps  on  the  back  and  with  affectionate  oaths. 
Price  was  mounted  on  his  Indian  pony  and  I 
on  Sacramento,  a  burro  of  uncommon  size, 
while  our  effects  were  packed  on  the  backs  of 
two  other  burros,  Beecher  and  California  by 
name,  with  two  of  California's  foals  trotting 
abreast  as  a  running  accompaniment  to  the 
show. 

Past  the  shops  and  saloons  and  dance-halls 
and  hotels  we  wound  our  way  on  among  the 
frail  shanties  at  the  outskirts  of  the  camp,  until 
we  struck  the  wagon  trail  that  led  southward 
through  a  ranching  country  in  the  direction 
of  the  pass  over  the  mountain  to  Durango. 
Snow  lay  lightly  on  the  ground;  vast  tracts, 


134  "a  burro-puncher" 

however,  had  been  swept  clear  by  the  wind,  so 
that  ours  was  an  unobstructed  course,  except 
where  we  had  to  plough  through  occasional 
drifts,  which  our  animals  did  with  ease,  tossing 
the  feathery  flakes  until  they  flashed  again  in 
the  clear  sunlight  of  a  frosty  morning.  The 
burros  were  at  their  best,  keeping  the  trail  at 
a  steady  pace  that  never  hinted  at  the  habit  of 
wandering.  Price  was  high-spirited  at  the 
thought  of  Phoenix,  and,  between  snatches  of 
song,  he  regaled  me  with  the  glories  of  the 
Indian  summer  which  we  should  find  across 
the  range.  I  could  well  share  his  light-heart- 
edness.  As  far  as  Creede  I  had  walked  alone, 
picking  the  way  with  ease,  but,  between  Creede 
and  Phoenix,  there  lay  a  stretch  of  the  fast- 
fading  frontier  which  I  longed  to  cross  on  foot, 
yet  knew  that  I  could  not  without  a  guide. 
And  here,  as  by  miracle,  one  had  appeared  in 
the  person  of  Price,  who  knew  the  land  and 
them  that  dwelt  therein,  and  who  was  more 
than  guide  in  being  a  philosopher  and  friend. 
The  keen  air  quickened  our  blood,  as  we 
breathed  deep  of  its  rarefied  purity  and  felt  the 
mild  warmth  of  the  winter  sun  like  the  glow 


"a  burro-puncher"  136 

of  rising  spirits.  The  mountain-peaks  rose 
white  and  still  above  the  dark  ruling  of  the 
timber  line,  yet  radiant  in  the  light,  and  serene 
in  a  peace  that  passeth  knowledge;  and  the 
head  waters  of  the  Rio  Grande  swept  past  us 
in  streams  that  were  dark  against  the  snow,  but 
ablaze  where  they  reflected  the  sun. 

It  was  long  past  noon  before  I  thought  of 
stopping,  and  then  I  found  that  there  were  to 
be  no  mid-day  stops  on  this  expedition,  for  the 
days  were  so  short  that  camp  had  to  be  made 
between  four  and  five  in  the  afternoon,  and,  as 
it  was  diflicult  to  get  started  in  the  morning 
much  before  eight  o'clock,  we  could  give  at 
the  best  but  little  more  than  eight  hours  in  the 
day  to  travel. 

For  some  time  that  afternoon  we  had  been 
in  the  shadow  of  a  mountain  to  the  west,  and 
the  light  was  fading  fast,  when,  as  we  rose 
upon  a  knoll  above  the  stream  whose  bed  we 
were  ascending,  Price  saw  that  it  was  a  good 
camping-ground,  and  the  caravan  came  to  a 
halt.  "Wood  was  abundant  about  us,  so  that 
water  was  soon  boiling,  and  slices  cut  from  a 
frozen  shoulder  of  beef  were  presently  frying 


136  "A   BUERO-PUNCHEB  " 

in  the  saucepan,  while  the  tea  drew  to  a  fearful 
strength  at  the  fire's  edge.  After  supper  and 
a  smoke,  we  made  ready  our  bed.  An  old 
piece  of  canvas,  some  seven  feet  by  fourteen, 
was  first  spread  upon  level  ground;  then  we  ar- 
ranged upon  half  of  it  all  the  gunny-sacks  that 
we  had  brought  as  cushions  for  the  pack-sad- 
dles. These  formed  a  mattress,  over  which 
we  spread  our  blankets,  drawing  up  finally  the 
unused  half  of  the  canvas  as  a  top  covering. 
Going  to  bed  consisted  simply  of  taking  off  our 
boots  and  folding  our  coats  for  pillows,  then 
disappearing  with  all  speed  under  the  blankets, 
with  the  canvas  drawn  well  over  our  heads  to 
keep  out  the  bitter  night  cold  of  that  altitude 
in  late  November.  Our  animals  browsed  near 
the  camp,  the  bells  about  their  necks  tinkling 
as  they  moved,  until  they,  too,  found  shelter 
and  settled  down  to  rest. 

When  I  wakened  it  was  from  deepest  sleep, 
and  I  looked  out  from  under  cover  for  some 
sign  of  day,  but  there  was  none.  The  stars 
were  shining  undimmed,  with  the  effect  of  near- 
ness which  brought  back  vividly  an  illusion  of 
childhood.     Nothing  in  their  position  gave  me 


"a  burro-puncher"  137 

a  hint  of  the  time,  but  Price,  on  waking,  saw  at 
a  glance  that  the  dawn  was  near.  Scarcely 
was  the  fire  lit  and  water  put  on  to  boil  before 
the  dark  bulks  of  the  mountains  to  the  east 
were  clear  cut  against  a  brightening  sky. 
Breakfast  over  and  the  dishes  washed,  we  had 
a  smoke  and,  having  fed  the  animals  from  a 
little  store  of  grain,  we  saddled  and  packed 
them  for  the  day's  march. 

Nothing  in  the  previous  day's  experience 
suggested  the  rigor  of  this  afternoon's  prog- 
ress. All  went  prosperously  in  the  morning, 
for  we  were  still  following  the  wagon  trail,  and 
the  burros  kept  it  as  by  instinct.  Only  the 
snow  was  deepening,  which  was  a  reminder  of 
the  warnings  we  received  in  Creede  that  we 
were  attempting  the  pass  dangerously  late  in 
the  year.  What  with  snow  and  the  loss  of 
leaves,  the  "  look  "  of  the  region  had  so  far 
changed  since  Price  passed  that  way  in  spring 
that,  with  small  wonder,  he  could  not  find  the 
lead  of  the  foot-trail  that  crosses  the  Divide. 
Again  and  again  we  struck  in  to  the  left  only 
to  discover  presently  that  we  were  following  a 
false  lead,  until  Price,  impatient  of  further 


138  "a  burro-puncheb " 

dallying,  boldly  led  the  way  in  an  ascent  of  a 
trackless  mountain  whose  farther  side,  he 
knew,  would  disclose  the  lost  trail. 

A  long,  steep  climb  by  a  well-trodden  way  is 
difficult  at  the  best  for  pack  animals,  but  we 
were  now  in  a  forest  with  the  course  obstruct- 
ed by  undergrowth  and  the  trunks  of  fallen 
trees,  and  the  uncertain  footing  covered  with 
treacherous  snow.  The  burros  took  it  splen- 
didly from  the  first,  straining  their  muscles  in 
a  toilsome  climb  that  was  doubly  hard  because 
of  its  obstacles.  But  as  the  hours  passed  and 
the  way  grew  more  difficult,  their  strength  be- 
gan to  fail.  Then  came  long  resting  spells, 
followed  by  spurts  of  frantic  climbing. 
Again  and  again  we  seemed  to  be  nearing  the 
top,  only  to  find  the  crest  of  a  ridge  with  an- 
other summit  towering  far  beyond.  Present- 
ly the  burros  were  falling  from  sheer  fatigue. 
With  a  few  yards  of  upward  struggle,  down 
they  would  sink  exhausted,  and,  after  letting 
them  rest.  Price  and  I  had  our  hands  full  in 
dragging  them  to  their  feet  again. 

It  was  nearing  sunset  when  we  gained  the 
top,  and,  once  there,  all  our  troubles  vanished. 


"a  burro-puncher"  139 

"We  passed  from  the  cover  of  the  wood  out 
upon  a  treeless  slope,  swept  clear  of  snow  and 
covered  by  the  past  summer's  growth  of  grass, 
brown  and  dry  and  excellent  fodder.  A 
stream  flowed  through  the  natural  meadow, 
and  on  a  ledge  above  it,  as  plain  as  day,  was 
the  winding  trail  making  off  in  the  direction 
of  the  Divide.  We  gratefully  camped  there 
that  night,  while  our  tired  beasts  gorged  them- 
selves with  grass. 

Whatever  the  difficulties  of  crossing  were 
to  be,  we  were  clearly  not  to  be  hampered  by 
foul  weather.  The  night  was  as  still  and  cold 
as  the  last  had  been,  and  the  morning  again 
was  cloudless.  We  were  up  by  starlight  as 
before,  and  the  camp-fire  was  sending  volleys 
of  glowing  sparks  into  the  surrounding  dark- 
ness when  the  signs  of  dawn  appeared.  I 
went  to  the  brook  for  water  and  was  back  just 
in  time  to  see  the  sunrise  from  the  camp.  We 
were  in  a  narrow  valley  that  stretched  south- 
westward  in  an  upward  trend  toward  the  sum- 
mit of  the  range.  From  its  northeastern  open- 
ing we  could  see  far  over  a  confused  mass  of 
mountains  whose  outlines  grew  clearer  in  the 


140  "a  buero-punoher " 

return  of  day.  With  infinite  majesty  the 
light  streamers  flung  themselves  across  the  sky, 
paling  the  bright  stars;  and,  when  a  distant 
snow-peak  caught  the  first  clear  ray,  all  the 
others  seemed  to  lift  their  heads  in  an  ecstasy 
of  praise  and  welcome.  In  another  moment 
the  eastern  wall  of  our  valley  was  fringed  by 
a  tracery  of  fire,  where  level  beams  shone 
through  the  trees  which  stood  out  against  the 
sky.  And  last,  upon  us  in  the  depth  of  the 
valley,  the  sun  rose,  prodigal  of  his  splendor 
and  of  his  gifts  of  light  and  life. 

I  had  left  Price  squatting  near  the  fire  with 
his  face  to  the  east  as  he  cut  slices  of  bacon  into 
a  saucepan.  On  my  return  from  the  brook  I 
found  him  still  sitting  there,  but  grown  oblivi- 
ous to  bacon.  His  forearms  were  resting  on 
his  knees,  while  loosely  in  one  hand  he  held  a 
knife  and  a  piece  of  bacon  in  the  other.  From 
under  an  old  felt  hat,  long,  black,  matted  hair 
fell  upon  his  neck  and  mingled  with  a  dark, 
unkempt  beard.  His  face,  blackened  by  the 
smoke  of  the  camp-fire,  was  lifted  to  the  east- 
ern sky,  and  his  eyes  were  on  the  sunrise. 
Such  a  look,  transfixed  with  reverence  and 


"a  burro-puncher"  141 

wonder,  seemed  to  link  him  with  some  early 
epoch  of  the  race,  when  the  sense  of  power  and 
beauty  awoke  in  man ;  and  as  he  drew  himself 
erect  without  lifting  his  eyes  from  the  scene 
before  him,  "  It's  not  strange,"  he  remarked, 
"  that  men  have  worshipped  the  sun." 

The  snow  grew  deeper  with  every  mile  of 
the  march  that  morning.  We  were  nearing 
the  Divide,  and  one  evidence  of  it  was  the 
piercing  wind  that  blew  down  the  gorge.  Not 
since  the  morning  of  the  first  day  out  had 
either  of  us  ridden;  for  the  animals  had  as 
much  as  they  could  do  to  carry  themselves  and 
their  packs,  and  now  we  found  that  we  must 
help  them  by  opening  a  path  through  the 
snow.  It  lay  a  foot  deep  before  us,  then  two 
feet  and  more  as  we  mounted  the  Divide,  so 
that  Price  and  I  were  soon  alternating  in  the 
work  of  breaking  a  way.  One  of  us  would 
plunge  through  until  fagged  out,  then  the 
other  would  take  his  place  in  treading  down 
the  drift,  and  so  we  forged  ahead,  a  few  yards 
at  a  time,  wet  to  the  skin  with  melting  snow 
and  cut  to  the  bone  by  the  wind. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  we  travelled  that 


142  "a  burko-puncher " 

day;  it  could  not  have  been  many  miles,  and 
I  do  not  care  to  think  of  possible  consequences, 
had  we  been  overtaken  by  a  storm,  instead  of 
having  the  fairest  possible  winter  weather. 
But  we  put  in  more  than  eight  hours  of  con- 
tinuous work  and  were  repaid  in  the  late 
afternoon  by  reaching  camping-ground  on  the 
western  side  of  the  Divide,  almost  as  good  as 
that  which  we  found  for  the  night  before. 

The  next  day's,  Tuesday's,  march  was  one 
that  dwells  delightfully  in  memory — not  for 
any  element  of  excitement,  but  for  the  simple 
joy  of  it.  All  day  we  descended  by  a  trail  that 
wound  through  canon  after  canon,  crossing 
and  recrossing  the  streams  whose  waters  were 
flowing  toward  the  Pacific,  as  those  of  the  day 
before  were  to  find  a  final  outlet  in  the  At- 
lantic. It  was  cold,  but  it  seemed  like  spring 
in  contrast  with  the  day  before,  for  the  sun 
shone  bright,  and  birds  were  in  the  trees,  and 
here  and  there  the  snow  had  melted,  giving 
to  the  soil  the  suggestion  of  returning  life. 

The  burros  plainly  shared  the  feeling  of  re- 
lief in  reaching  a  more  passable  region,  and 
the  art  of  burro-punching  began,  consequent- 


"a  burro -puncher'*  143 

ly,  to  disclose  its  difficulties.  From  one  side 
and  then  the  other  of  the  trail  they  would 
break  away  in  all  directions,  exploring  the  sur- 
rounding country,  never  with  an  air  of  mis- 
chief, but  always  with  a  sober,  dogged  per- 
versity that  was  the  more  exasperating  because 
it  wore  a  mask  of  reason.  Once  back  into  the 
trail,  they  might  keep  it  faultlessly  for  miles 
on  end,  and  then,  from  no  apparent  cause,  be- 
gin once  more  to  wander.  They  were  most 
difficult  to  manage  at  the  fords.  Generally 
they  scattered  to  the  four  winds  at  the  first 
approach  to  water,  and  when  we  had  cor- 
ralled them  again  and  forced  them  down  to 
the  brink,  they  would  stand  calmly,  planted 
ankle-deep  in  the  stream,  resolutely  deter- 
mined not  to  move.  It  was  then  that  Price 
gave  vent  to  real  profanity,  and  I  am  bound  to 
own  that  it  was  effective.  When  beating  and 
prodding  and  the  milder  invective  failed  to 
urge  the  burros  forward.  Price  would  stand 
back,  pale  with  rage,  and  begin  to  swear,  call- 
ing upon  all  his  gods  and  blasting  the  reputa- 
tions of  his  beasts  unto  the  third  and  fourth 
generation  of  their  ancestors.     By  some  subtle 


144  *'A  BURRO-PUNCHKK  " 

perception  they  seemed  to  understand  that  this 
meant  business,  and  slowly  at  first,  but  pres- 
ently, as  though  they  rather  enjoyed  the  water, 
they  waded  through  and  started  down  the  trail 
beyond. 

We  camped  that  night  in  a  narrow  canon 
whose  level  bed  was  well  grown  with  trees  and 
walled  by  scarped  cliffs,  which  rose  sheer  above 
it.  Price  said  that  it  formed  a  miniature 
Yosemite,  and  certainly  it  made  good  camp- 
ing-ground; for  with  plenty  of  wood  and 
water,  it  was  well  protected  from  the  wind, 
and  we  slept  there  in  great  comfort.  But  our 
fare  was  growing  monotonous.  We  soon  ex- 
hausted the  supply  of  beef  and  had  since  been 
living  upon  bacon  and  bread,  so  that  we  heart- 
ily welcomed  the  sight  of  a  ranchman's  cabin 
near  the  end  of  the  next  day's  march,  for  there 
we  purchased  a  peck  of  potatoes  and  thus  en- 
larged our  bill  of  fare  to  bacon  and  "  spuds  " 
and  bread  and  gravy. 

Thanksgiving-day  was  celebrated  by  faring 
sumptuously  in  the  evening  and  sleeping  un- 
der cover.  And  it  was  the  more  delightful  cel- 
ebration  for   being  wholly   unpremeditated. 


**A  burro-puncher"  145 

There  was  no  prospect  through  the  day  of  any- 
thing but  the  usual  march  and  camp  in  the 
open  at  night.  We  were  plainly  in  a  more 
populous  region,  for  we  had  struck  a  wagon- 
trail  again,  and  repeatedly,  in  the  morning,  we 
met  farm  wagons  laden  with  solemn  families 
in  Sunday  dress.  As  the  afternoon  wore  on 
we  grew  hungrier  for  thinking  of  Thanksgiv- 
ing dinners.  At  dusk  we  were  passing  a 
ranch  upon  which  the  hay  presses  had  just 
ceased  working  for  the  day.  A  little  farther 
down  the  road  we  overtook  two  men  who  were 
about  to  enter  a  wooden  building,  which 
proved  to  be  a  deserted  school-house.  Price 
hailed  them  and  they  turned,  standing  in  the 
open  door.  Practised  as  he  was  in  the  ameni- 
ties of  the  frontier,  it  took  him  no  time  to 
strike  up  an  acquaintance,  and  soon  we  were 
bade  welcome  to  share  the  school-house  as  a 
camping-place. 

Our  hosts  were  a  young  American  frontiers- 
man and  his  "  partner,"  an  Indian,  who  to- 
gether had  a  contract  for  pressing  hay  on  the 
neighboring  ranch,  and  who  were  living  mean- 
while   in    this    deserted    building.     Having 


146  "a  bureo-puncher " 

admitted  us,  they  completed  their  welcome  by 
doing  everything  in  their  power  for  our  com- 
fort. They  arranged  with  the  owner  to  past- 
ure our  animals  on  the  ranch  for  the  night, 
and  showed  us  where  to  find  wood  for  a  fire 
and  where  on  the  floor  to  spread  our  bed. 
And  when  the  evening  meal  was  ready,  they 
proposed  that  we  should  club  together,  giving 
us  of  their  fresh  meat  and  roasted  Indian  com 
and  steaming  hot  bread  in  exchange  for  our 
"  spuds  "  and  bacon.  But  we  had  some  chance 
of  making  return,  for  they  had  no  tobacco  to 
compare  with  ours,  and  far  into  the  night  we 
sat  talking,  over  pipes  fragrant  of  good  weed. 

Price  and  I  were  making  progress  in  ac- 
quaintance, and  every  day  I  had  fresh  cause 
for  self-congratulation  at  my  extraordinary 
luck  in  having  fallen  in  with  so  good  a  guide. 
Of  excellent  Irish  family.  Price  was  not  with- 
out education  and  a  taste  for  letters,  although 
he  had  chosen,  almost  as  a  boy,  the  career  of 
an  adventurer  on  the  frontier.  And  now  at 
middle  life,  having  ranged  the  Southwest  as 
few  men  have  done,  and  having  seen  all  phases 
of  its  life  and  shared  most  of  them,  he  was 


*' A  BURRO-PUNCH  KB ''  147 

looking  forward  to  further  casual  living,  per- 
fectly content  so  long  as  he  had  a  camping 
outfit  and  could  wander  as  he  pleased  over  the 
face  of  nature.  That  some  day  he  would 
"  strike  it  rich  "  he  never  doubted — and  may 
his  faith  come  true.  Meanwhile  he  was  get- 
ting a  good  deal  out  of  life.  Nature  in  her 
milder  moods  was  a  constant  solace  and  a  joy 
to  him.  In  long  marches  through  golden  Ind- 
ian summer  days,  he  sang  and  spouted  verses 
of  his  own,  and  told  me  veritable  Ulysses's 
tales  of  men  and  their  strange  ways.  The  few 
books  which  he  had  read  he  had  made  his 
own,  for  his  memory  was  retentive,  and  he 
never  forgot,  apparently,  a  face  or  a  name, 
80  that  his  progress  through  the  country  was 
like  a  walk  about  his  own  neighborhood. 

With  the  instinctive,  gentlemanlike  reserve 
of  the  Western  frontiersman,  he  never  ques- 
tioned me  about  myself;  he  was  far  more  in- 
terested in  what  knowledge  I  might  have  gath- 
ered, which  he  could  add  to  his  own.  Oddly 
enough,  it  was  the  little  reading  that  I  had 
done  in  philosophy  that  seemed  to  attract  him 
moet.     Many  a  night  when  it  was  mild  enough 


148  "  A   BURRO-PUNCHER  " 

to  sleep  with  our  heads  uncovered  we  lay  side 
by  side,  "  overarched  by  gorgeous  night,"  gaz- 
ing into  the  starry  firmament,  and  I  would 
tell  him  what  I  could  of  theories  of  the  uni- 
verse from  Thales  to  Herbert  Spencer,  feeling 
all  the  while  the  tension  of  his  mind  as  he 
reached  out  eagerly  for  these  guesses  at  the 
mystery  of  things. 

It  happened  that  I  had  been  reading  "  Con- 
ingsby,"  at  Creede,  and  Prince  slipped  the 
copy  into  his  pocket  as  we  left  the  camp.  He 
devoured  it  by  our  camp-fires  at  night.  The 
story  held  him,  but  most  of  all  he  was  spell- 
bound by  its  literary  charm,  and  he  added  a 
quaint  reason  for  his  liking  in  the  remark: 

"  You  know,"  he  said  to  me,  "  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  was  always  square  with  the  Irish." 

His  national  partisanship  was  of  the  stanch- 
est,  and  he  had  always  given  to  the  Irish  fund 
when  he  could;  but  the  outcome  of  the  fight 
in  Committee  Eoom  No.  15  had  been  too  much 
for  him,  and  he  would  stoutly  maintain  that 
never  again,  so  long  as  the  "  traitors  "  who 
had  turned  against  Pamell  were  in  the  ascen- 
dant, would  he  interest  himself  in  furthering 


"a  bttrro-puncher "  149 

Home  Rule — threads  of  vital  connection 
which  were  a  little  strange,  I  thought,  between 
points  so  widely  severed  as  St.  Stephen's  and 
the  deserts  of  Arizona. 

Elsewhere  I  have  already  sketched  in  out- 
line our  trip  as  we  walked  south  together  from 
Durango  to  the  San  Juan,  then  through  the 
Xavajo  Reservation  to  the  high  plateau  of 
northern  New  Mexico,  where,  utterly  deserted 
by  fair  weather,  we  camped  for  a  week,  while 
a  cold  wave  swept  over  us,  forcing  the  ther- 
mometer down  to  ten  and  twelve  degrees  below 
zero,  and  nearly  freezing  us  and  our  animals 
in  the  still  cold  of  the  winter  nights. 

Even  after  we  got  under  way  again  and 
were  making  progress  southward  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  "  rimrock "  of  the  Mogollon 
Mountains,  persistent  ill-luck  followed  us  in 
the  shape  of  almost  nightly  falls  of  snow  and 
rain,  which  added  nothing  to  the  comfort  of 
sleeping  on  the  ground  or  walking  across  an  al- 
most trackless  waste.  But  if  we  were  disap- 
pointed here.  Price's  promise  of  Indian  sum- 
mer was  abundantly  fulfilled  when  once  we 
had  waded  through  the  snow  in  the  great 


150  "a  burro-pfncher " 

primeval  forests  that  cover  the  northern  slopes 
of  the  Mogollons,  and  made  the  abrupt  de- 
scent of  the  "  rimrock."  It  was  like  the  con- 
trast of  Florida  with  our  Northern  winter. 
The  live-oak  and  budding  cottonwood  and  the 
warm  sun  and  sprouting  grass  gave  us  royal 
welcome  from  the  cold  and  snow  beyond;  and, 
at  the  end  of  the  first  day's  journey  in  this 
region,  we  came  out  upon  a  ranch.  It  was 
thirty  miles  to  the  nearest  neighbor,  and  the 
ranchman  and  his  wife  were  glad  to  see  any- 
one, even  casual  "  burro-punchers,"  like  Price 
and  me.  There  chanced  to  be  a  considerable 
company  at  the  ranch  that  night.  An  outfit 
of  three  men  who  were  hunting  mountain  lion 
through  the  range  for  the  sake  of  the  bounty 
on  their  scalps  had  come  there  to  camp,  bring- 
ing with  them  the  carcass  of  a  bear.  And  the 
postman,  whose  beat  took  him  from  the  Santa 
Fe  line  southward  through  some  Mormon  set- 
tlements and  on  to  scattered  ranches  north  of 
the  Tonto  Basin,  was  also  quartered  there.  So 
that  we  sat  down  more  than  a  dozen  strong  to 
dine  on  bear  steak  and  potatoes  and  bread  and 
coffee;  and  when  dinner  was  over,  Price  and 


"a  burro-puncher"  161 

I  again  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  that  our 
tobacco  suited  well  the  taste  of  the  company. 
We  were  gathered  now  in  the  living-room  of 
the  cabin.  Some  of  the  men  were  seated  on 
the  floor  and  others  in  rough,  hand-made  chairs 
about  a  wood  fire  in  a  large,  open  fireplace. 
The  talk  ranged  at  random  over  phases  of 
hard  living  known  to  such  men  as  these.  It 
was  varied  and  rich  and  sometimes  racy.  In 
it  Price  shone  as  a  bright,  particular  star. 
None  had  travelled  the  Southwest  so  thorough- 
ly as  he,  or  experienced  so  much  of  its  char- 
acteristic life.  Then  his  native  readiness  at 
narrative  stood  him  in  good  stead,  and,  penni- 
less prospector  that  he  was,  he  held  unchal- 
lenged the  centre  of  the  stage. 

The  door  of  the  dining-room  stood  open, 
and,  when  I  had  finished  my  pipe,  I  joined  the 
ranchman's  wife,  who  sat  beside  the  table  in  a 
rocking-chair,  holding  in  her  arms  her  oldest 
child,  a  boy  of  five  or  six.  She  seemed  glad 
to  have  someone  to  talk  to.  The  conversation 
at  table  had  swept  from  end  to  end  in  a  man- 
ner diverting  to  her,  but  in  which  she  as  little 
dreamed  of  joining  as  a  bird  would  venture 


152  "  A   BURRO-PUNCHEK  " 

with  untried  wings  into  a  high  wind.  She 
was  too  delicately  reared  to  be  at  home  in  the 
thickening  tobacco-smoke  of  the  living-room 
and  so  she  was  alone  with  the  child,  the  hired 
woman  being  in  the  kitchen.  I  praised  the 
country  side  which  she  and  her  husband  had 
chosen  as  their  home,  and  told  her  how  well  it 
contrasted  with  a  region  only  a  few  miles  to 
the  north;  but,  if  I  found  a  way  to  her  heart 
at  all,  it  was  in  genuine  admiration  of  the  boy, 
whose  light  hair  rested  in  moist  curls  about  his 
glowing  face,  as  he  lay  sleeping  in  his  mother's 
arms.  She  was  not  a  discontented  woman — 
far  from  it;  she  was  young,  and  her  eyes  shone 
with  health  and  with  vital  interest  in  the 
things  about  her.  But  it  was  rarely  that  she 
saw  anyone  from  the  world  outside,  and  I  was 
a  stranger,  and  when  I  owned  to  having  been 
in  the  Northwest,  she  told  me  eagerly  that  her 
own  people  and  her  husband's  lived  "  back  east 
in  Minnesota,"  where  they  both  were  born  and 
bred. 

How  can  I  suggest  the  pathos  of  it?  She 
was  not  complaining  and  yet,  as  she  went  on 
telling  me  of  an  earlier  time,  it  was  almost  as 


"A  burro-puncher"  153 

a  captive  might  have  spoken  of  the  wide  range 
of  living  when  he  was  free.  Life  in  constant 
contact  with  her  friends  and  the  breadth  of 
their  many  interests  was  in  such  striking  con- 
trast to  existence  on  a  ranch,  with  the  nearest 
neighbor  thirty  miles  in  the  offing,  and  with 
never  a  look  from  year  to  year  over  the  rugged 
hills  that  formed  the  horizon. 

One  could  see  at  a  glance  the  opposite  effects 
of  the  change  upon  the  two  natures.  Her  hus- 
band, native-bom  and  country-bred,  like  her- 
self, and  schooled  as  a  man  must  be  whose 
bringing  up  is  in  a  community  which  draws  its 
blood  and  traditions  pure  from  New  England, 
yet  had  become  more  a  frontiersman  every 
year,  in  whom  the  memories  of  earlier  things 
faded  fast  before  the  dominant  realities  of  his 
new  surroundings.  She,  on  the  contrary,  cher- 
ished these  memories  of  her  own — her  home 
and  friends  and  chuych  associations  and  Chau- 
tauqua circle  (she  told  me  particularly  of  that) 
until  they  were  enshrined  within  her,  and  one 
could  but  see  that,  however  loneliness  might 
oppress  her,  she  had  an  escape  which  must 
have  furnished  at  times  an  enjoyment  keener, 


164  "  A   BURKO-PUNCHER  " 

perhaps,  than  any  which  real  experience  would 
have  brought. 

I  have  forgotten  its  name,  but  I  think  that 
it  was  known  as  "  Young's  Valley,"  a  region 
some  distance  south  of  the  "  rimrock "  and 
north  of  the  hills  which  hem  in  the  Tonto 
Basin.  There  were  several  ranches  there,  and 
a  well-defined  trail  led  on,  by  way  of  San  Reno 
Pass,  to  Phoenix.  When  we  entered  the  val- 
ley Price  was  all  for  veering  off  to  the  south- 
west and  reaching  Phoenix  by  the  Natural 
Bridge,  which  he  wished  me  to  see.  We  left 
the  trail  near  the  first  cabin  which  we  passed 
in  the  valley,  a  deserted  cabin  for  the  time,  and 
struck  across  the  grass-grown  hills  in  search 
of  another  way.  Soon  we  were  in  a  maze  of 
trails;  they  were  leading  in  every  direction, 
but  they  were  cattle-paths,  and  we  came  upon 
herds  feeding  over  the  winter-brown  hills.  It 
was  a  gently  rolling  country  at  the  first,  where 
Price  had  not  the  smallest  difficulty  in  steer- 
ing a  course;  for,  although  he  had  never  been 
there  before,  yet  the  way  had  been  described 
to  him  and  he  had  no  fear  of  losing  it.  Our 
only  danger  lay,  apparently,  in  exhausting  our 


'*A  burro-puncher"  155 

provisions  before  reaching  an  inhabited  region 
beyond.  But  we  thought  little  of  that,  and 
entered  light-heartedly  enough  upon  an  ex- 
ploration that  was  new  and  attractive  to  us 
both. 

Trouble  began  with  the  wealcening  of  our 
burros.  "We  had  very  little  grain  when  we 
left  the  Tonto  trail,  and  we  counted  upon  fod- 
der enough  from  a  grazing  country.  But  the 
grass  grew  thinner  as  we  went,  and  the  lean- 
ness of  the  cattle  attested  the  leanness  of  the 
land,  until  we  began  to  fear  that  our  beasts 
would  not  have  strength  enough  to  pull 
through.  Moreover,  the  country  became  in- 
creasingly rough,  so  that  the  effort  of  travel 
was  the  greater.  Soon  there  came  a  day  when 
our  animals  were  weak  and  tottering  under 
their  loads,  and  we  ourselves  had  to  begin  the 
march  on  a  breakfast  of  tea  and  a  few  boiled 
beans,  which  exhausted  our  store.  Still  Price 
was  confident  of  getting  through,  and,  if  the 
burros  could  hold  out,  there  was  prospect  of 
plenty  by  night. 

In  the  middle  of  the  morning  we  found  ly- 
ing beside  the  trail  a  cow  that  was  plainly  dy- 


106  ••  A  burko-puncher" 

ing.  For  an  hour  we  worked  over  her,  trying 
to  discover  evidences  of  a  wound  or  of  a  broken 
leg,  and  trying,  too,  to  ease  her  pain.  I  left 
her  alive  regretfully,  but  Price  advised  against 
shooting  her. 

Matters  grew  serious  that  afternoon.  The 
trail  became  hopelessly  lost,  so  that  not  even 
Price,  with  his  developed  instinct,  could  find 
it  again.  We  were  in  the  heart  of  the  hills 
now,  with  canons  opening  in  strange  confusion 
about  us.  One  after  another  we  explored 
them,  only  to  find  each  a  "  box-canon  "  at  the 
end.  Price  was  sure  that  our  desired  coun- 
try lay  just  beyond,  and  it  was  maddening, 
late  in  the  day,  to  acknowledge  that  he  could 
find  no  way  out  but  the  one  by  which  we  en- 
tered. It  was  a  sorry  retreat;  hungry  and 
worn  we  went  supperless  into  camp.  By  rare 
good  luck,  however,  we  hit  upon  camping- 
ground  where  there  was  more  grass  than  we 
had  seen  for  some  time,  and  in  the  morning 
our  burros  and  the  pony  were  comparatively 
revived,  fit  again  for  a  hard  journey.  And  we 
gave  it  them. 

Price  and  I  had  had  nothing  to  eat  for 


*'a  burro-puncher"  157 

twenty-four  hours,  and  very  little  then. 
Meanwhile  we  had  been  working  hard  in  keen 
mountain  air,  and  I  was  so  hungry  by  the  time 
that  we  got  back  to  the  cow,  now  dead  beside 
the  trail,  that  I  proposed  our  eating  some  of 
her.  Price  quickly  put  an  end  to  the  plan, 
however,  not  on  hygienic  grounds,  but  by  ex- 
plaining that  the  cattlemen,  if  they  found  her 
multilated,  would  conclude  that  she  had  been 
killed,  and  would  make  matters  lively  for  us  in 
consequence,  hanging  being  the  not  uncom- 
mon penalty  for  this  offence. 

One  does  not  keep  close  count  of  days  in 
wandering  over  a  frontier,  and  it  was  only  an 
aggravation  of  our  plight  to  remember  that  it 
was  not  Sunday  merely  but  Christmas-day  as 
well.  But  if  Christmas  heightened  the  sense 
of  hardship,  it  furnished  an  admirable  setting 
to  its  end.  By  trusting  his  instinct  for  a  short 
cut,  Price  brought  us  out  in  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon  upon  open  hills,  from  which  we  not 
only  saw  a  section  of  Young's  Valley,  but,  ris- 
ing clear  from  the  middle  of  it,  a  column  of 
blue  smoke  from  the  chimney  of  a  ranchman's 
cabin.     We  wasted  no  time  in  covering  the  in- 


158  "a  bureo-punchek " 

tervening  miles  and  then  we  lifted,  light-heart- 
edly, the  latch  of  the  road-gate  and,  with  the 
easy  assurance  of  the  frontier,  drove  our  ani- 
mals into  the  yard  beside  the  corral.  For 
some  reason  we  had  not  been  seen  from  the 
cabin,  so  Price  walked  on  to  the  door,  while  I 
mounted  guard  over  the  burros.  From  a  seat 
in  the  sun  on  an  old  hen-coop  I  could  watch 
them  as  they  nibbled  the  short  grass,  while 
from  the  cabin  came  peals  of  laughter,  denot- 
ing that  Price  had  fallen  among  friends  whp 
were  keeping  Christmas  festival. 

I  was  willing  enough  to  rest  outside,  know- 
ing that  we  had  reached  a  hospitable  roof  and 
that  a  dinner  was  assured.  Sitting  there  for 
some  time,  I  presently  began  to  question 
what  was  keeping  Price,  when  the  cabin-door 
opened  and  two  women  appeared.  As  they 
walked  down  the  footpath  to  the  gate,  I  gath- 
ered that  they  were  neighbors  returning  from 
a  Christmas  call.  But  this  was  the  least  inter- 
esting inference,  and  I  was  totally  at  a  loss 
for  others.  The  wonder  grew  as  they  came 
nearer.  They  were  young  and  faultlessly 
dressed,    and    one    of    them    was   beautiful. 


"a  burro-puncher"  159 

Their  dress  was  of  the  kind  that  charms  with 
its  perfect  simplicity  and  the  air  of  natural 
distinction  with  which  it  is  worn.  They 
rested  frank  eyes  on  me  for  a  moment  as  they 
passed  and  nodded  pleasantly,  speaking  their 
thanks  with  sweet  voices,  as  I  stood  holding 
open  the  gate.  Who  they  were  remained  a 
mystery,  and  I  was  content  to  have  it  so,  for 
they  left  me  not  without  a  sense  of  Christmas 
visitation,  which  stirred  again  the  memories 
of  my  own  "  God's  country." 

The  ranchman  was  a  Virginian,  tall,  fair- 
eyed,  and  soft  of  speech,  and  when  he  and 
Price  came  out  together  they  were  stanch 
friends  on  the  strength  of  an  earlier  acquaint- 
ance, and  we  had  the  freedom  of  the  ranch. 
We  unpacked  and  corralled  the  animals  and 
then  made  ready  for  dinner.  Not  for  two 
days  had  we  tasted  food,  and  now  we  were 
seated  with  our  host  and  hostess  and  their  two 
sons  at  a  table  which  groaned  under  sweet 
potatoes  and  roast  com  and  piles  of  bread  and 
great  dishes  full  of  steaming  "  hog  and 
hominy,"  and  with  it  all,  the  best  of  Christmas 
cheer.     For  two  days  we  stayed  at  the  Vir- 


160  "a  burro-punchee " 

ginian's  ranch  and  then,  having  purchased 
from  him  a  fresh  store  of  food,  we  resumed  the 
march  by  way  of  the  Tonto  Basin  and  Fort 
McDowell  to  Phcenix. 

On  ]^ew-year's-day  we  were  camped  at  Fort 
McDowell;  and,  when  we  set  out  early  on  the 
next  morning,  there  remained  but  about  thirty 
miles  to  Phoenix,  so  we  resolved  to  cover  it  in  a 
single  march.  Night  found  us  still  some  miles 
from  the  city,  but  the  night  was  clear  and 
flooded  with  moonlight.  The  moon  made 
plain  the  way,  yet  played  fantastically  over 
^he  face  of  the  country.  Long  reaches  of 
white  sand  were  converted  into  Arabian  des- 
erts, with  pilgrim  caravans  moving  across 
them;  the  irrigated  ranches  were  transformed 
into  tropical  gardens,  whose  luxuriance  was 
heightened  by  the  exquisite  softness  of  the 
night,  and  then  there  were  stretches  of  uncom- 
promising Arizona  desert,  dusty  and  cactus- 
grown  and  redolent  of  alkali. 

It  was  nearing  midnight  when  we  entered 
the  town.  Price  directed  the  way  to  a  corral 
where  he  was  known,  and  where  we  left  the 
animals  feasting  on  fresh  alfalfa,  while  we 


"a  bitrro-puncher "  161 

fared  forth  to  see  his  friends.  It  was  precise- 
ly as  though  Price  had  invited  me  around  to 
his  club.  He  led  the  way  to  a  saloon,  and  as 
we  entered  it,  I  saw  at  once  its  typical  char- 
acter. At  the  left  of  the  entrance  was  a  bar, 
gorgeous  with  mirrors  and  cut  glass,  while 
down  the  deep  recesses  of  the  room  were  faro 
and  roulette  tables  and  tables  for  poker.  The 
groups  about  them  were  formed  of  "  cow- 
punchers,"  and  prospectors  and  "  Greasers  " 
and  Chinamen,  and  even  Indians,  all  mingling 
and  intermingling  with  a  freedom  that  sug- 
gested that  in  gambling  there  is  a  touch  of 
nature  that  makes  the  whole  world  kin. 

But  more  immediately  interesting  to  us  was 
a  group  which  stood  beside  the  bar.  It  was 
made  up,  as  I  found,  of  politicians,  high  in 
territorial  office,  all  of  whom  knew  Price  and 
hailed  him  cordially  while  asking  after  his 
luck.  For  some  time  we  stood  talking  with 
them,  then  one  of  their  number,  himself  not  a 
politician  but  a  business  man,  proposed  our 
joining  him  at  supper.  We  accepted,  I  the 
more  delightedly  because  he,  of  all  the  group, 
had  most  attracted  me.     Tall  and  very  hand- 


162  "a  burro-puncher" 

some,  he  had  the  hearing  of  a  gentleman,  and 
what  he  told  me  of  himself  confirmed  my  own 
impression  of  a  richly  varied  past.  Far  into 
the  night  we  talked,  and  I  could  well  believe 
him  when  he  said  that  the  fascination  of  the 
life  which  he  had  led  on  the  frontier  had  so  far 
grown  upon  him  that,  while  he  was  glad  to  go 
back  at  times  to  his  former  home  in  New  York, 
he  could  no  longer  remain  contented  there, 
hearing  as  he  always  did  after  a  few  months, 
at  most,  the  call  back  to  the  wild  freedom  of 
the  plains.  It  was  under  the  spell  of  what 
he  said,  enforced  by  my  little  experience  as  a 
"  burro-puncher,"  that  I  went  to  sleep  that 
night  on  a  bed  of  alfalfa  in  the  corral;  and 
when  I  wakened  in  the  morning  and  found  let- 
ters urging  my  return  to  the  East,  I  was  con- 
scious of  an  indifference  to  the  idea  which  was 
wholly  new  to  my  experience. 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE   SLUMS 

IF  anything  is  wanting  to  darken  the  pict- 
ure of  life  in  city  slums,  it  is  a  sense  of 
the  needlessness  of  much  of  the  suffering. 
And  this  is  the  sense  which  I  cannot  escape  in 
looking  back  upon  a  winter  in  Chicago,  from 
the  vantage  point  of  nearly  a  year  of  walking 
and  working  through  regions  west  of  that  city. 
I  left  Chicago  in  May  of  1892,  and  entered 
San  Francisco  in  February  of  the  following 
year,  having  gone  on  foot,  in  the  meantime, 
through  Illinois  and  southern  Minnesota  and 
western  Iowa,  and  almost  from  end  to  end  of 
Nebraska  and  Colorado  and  through  some  of 
New  Mexico  and  much  of  Arizona  and  Cali- 
fornia. It  was  not  in  the  character  of  a 
tramp,  but  as  a  wage-earner,  that  I  made  the 
journey;  and  the  only  notable  fact  about  it  was 
that  I  not  only  never  lacked  for  labor,  but  I 

almost  never  had  to  ask  for  it,  having  scores  of 
166 


166  INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS 

opportunities  of  work  pressed  upon  me  by  em- 
ployers hard  up  for  hands.  I  am  well  aware 
of  the  abnormal  in  ray  experiment  and  of  its 
little  worth  apart  from  the  value  of  experi- 
ence to  myself,  and  I  know  how  slight  a  con- 
nection with  the  deeper  causes  which  give  rise 
to  congestion  in  labor  centres  the  fact  of  ready 
employment  in  the  country  may  have.  Yet, 
as  one  result  of  personal  contact,  I  cannot  help 
seeing  much  of  the  misery  of  the  mass  in  the 
light  of  individuals  suffering  wretchedly  for 
want  of  knowledge  of  a  better  chance. 

We  speak  in  old-fashioned  phrase  of  a  city's 
slums  as  though  they  were  a  local  evil  in  the 
town,  quite  remote  in  connection  with  the  rest 
of  the  corporate  whole,  while  in  truth  we 
know,  in  our  haunting,  new-found  knowledge 
of  social  solidarity,  that  they  form  a  sore  which 
denotes  disease  in  every  part  of  the  body 
politic.  The  conviction  grows  upon  us  that  it 
is  often  at  the  cost  of  much  suffering  to  our 
kind  that  we  have  food  to  eat  and  raiment  to 
put  on,  and  the  immunity  from  personal  re- 
sponsibility which  once  we  felt  in  paying  high 
prices  for  our  wares  is  fast  being  undermined 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  167 

by  increased  acquaintance  with  the  ramifica- 
tions of  the  "  sweating  system."  Indeed,  we 
seem  to  see  that,  from  the  very  frame  of 
things,  if  one  enjoys,  another  suffers,  and  that 
the  unwitting  oppressors  of  the  poor  are  often 
the  poor  themselves,  while  the  destruction  of 
the  poor  is  their  poverty.  Men  tell  us  that 
things  were  growing  worse,  and  that  hope  lies 
that  way,  because  it  points  to  ultimate  dissolu- 
tion and  a  new  order.  I  find  it  impossible  to 
share  this  form  of  optimism,  and  I  cannot  see 
that  things  are  really  getting  worse,  but  rather 
incomparably  better  as  measured,  for  example, 
by  the  standard  of  the  last  century  of  indus- 
trial progress.  And  so  far  from  seeing  hope  in 
a  belief  that  matters  are  getting  worse,  I  find 
it  rather  in  the  view  that  much  that  is  worst 
in  modem  life  is  fast  becoming  intolerable  in 
a  society  which  grows  increasingly  conscious 
of  vital  interdependence  and  relationship. 
Meanwhile  the  concrete  facts  remain,  and  here 
is  a  glimpse  of  some  of  them  as  they  appear 
in  a  partial  record  of  fragments  of  two  days' 
experience  in  Chicago. 

I  was  working  as  a  hand-truckman  in  a  fac- 


168  INCIDENTS   OF  THE   SLUMS 

tory  far  out  on  Blue  Island  Avenue.  My 
wages  were  $1.50  a  day,  and  I  was  paying  for 
board  and  lodging,  in  a  tenement  across  the 
way,  $4.25  a  week.  As  one  result,  I  was  sav- 
ing money  and  would  soon  be  able  to  leave  the 
job  and  write  up  my  notes,  while  widening  my 
acquaintance  with  the  town  before  looking  for 
other  work.  Already  I  had  a  little  knowl- 
edge of  the  city.  For  two  weeks  after  enter- 
ing it  I  had  been  among  its  unemployed  and 
had  suifered  some  and  had  seen  the  real  suffer- 
ing among  others  of  my  class,  before  I  found 
occupation  in  a  West-side  factory. 

It  was  during  those  two  weeks  that  I  came 
to  know  a  widow,  with  whom  this  tale  is  first 
concerned.  I  met  her  early  in  December;  it 
was  now  nearing  the  end  of  January,  and  we 
factory  hands  were  marking  with  delight  the 
lengthening  of  the  days,  for  we  were  begin- 
ning to  have  a  little  daylight  left  when  work 
was  over.  At  last  one  afternoon  the  setting 
sun  came  pouring  through  the  kitchen  window 
while  we  were  washing  up  for  supper  at  Mrs. 
Schultz's  boarding-house.  That  was  because 
it  was  Saturday,  and  we  had  quit  at  five 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE   SLUMS  169 

o^clock,  being  given,  as  was  the  custom  in  the 
factory,  a  half  hour  on  Saturday  afternoons. 

The  usual  week's  end  excitement  was  run- 
ning high  among  the  men.  Gibes  and  louder 
talk  than  common  were  rife,  as  black  hands 
and  faces  came  white  from  soap  and  successive 
basins  of  hot  water.  Some  of  the  men  were 
going  in  the  evening  to  a  "  show,"  others  to  a 
"  fancy-dress  ball,"  and  a  few  were  saying 
nothing.  We  scattered  widely  after  supper, 
leaving  the  house  to  the  family,  which  must 
have  been  a  welcome  change  to  them,  for  gen- 
erally, through  the  week,  we  all  foregathered 
in  the  sitting-room  at  night  and  romped  with 
the  children  and  played  cards  until  bed-time. 

Mrs.  Stone  will  serve  as  the  widow's  name, 
and  my  first  errand  that  evening  took  me  to 
her  home,  which  was  in  the  basement  of  a 
building  on  Boston  Avenue.  We  were  both 
concerned  in  pressing  a  claim  which  she  had 
upon  her  husband's  people,  a  highly  just 
claim,  I  thought;  for  he  had  deserted  her  some 
time  before  his  death,  leaving  her  alone  in  the 
support  of  herself  and  their  two  children. 
Why  she  had  ever  come  to  the  city,  I  could 


170  INCIDENTS   OF   THE   SLUMS 

never  make  clearly  out,  beyond  what  had 
eeemed  to  be  to  her  a  strong  appeal  to  her 
reason  that,  if  she  must  make  her  own  living 
and  the  children's,  she  could  hope  to  do  it 
better  in  town  than  in  the  country  where  she 
was  bom  and  bred.  And  the  marvel  was  that 
she  had  succeeded  in  keeping  them  all  alive. 
The  city  had,  of  course,  furnished  an  awful 
disillusionment.  The  children  proved  an  in- 
superable barrier  to  employment  at  domestic 
service,  and,  failing  to  find  any  other  labor,  she 
was  rescued  finally  from  starvation  by  getting 
a  job  from  a  "  sweater."  She  deserved  suc- 
cess, for  she  was  an  heroic  creature.  To  hear 
her  describe  the  struggle,  you  would  gather 
that  hers  had  been  the  best  of  luck.  She 
merely  wanted  a  chance  to  work,  so  that  they 
might  live;  and  had  she  not  found  it,  just 
when  she  thought,  for  lack  of  it,  that  they 
must  starve? 

From  the  sweater's  shop  she  would  carry  the 
goods  two  miles  to  her  home,  walking  both 
ways,  for  she  could  not  afford  car-fare.  Then 
all  day  and  through  much  of  the  night  she 
made  the  garments.     They  were  boys'  waists, 


INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS  171 

and  the  materials,  ready  cut,  besides  the  neces- 
sary thread  and  buttons,  were  furnished  her. 
There  was  left  for  her  to  do  all  the  remaining 
work,  down  to  sewing  on  the  buttons  and  mak- 
ing the  button-holes,  and  she  was  paid  for  the 
finished  waists  at  the  rate  of  thirty-five  cents 
a  dozen. 

It  was  hard,  she  did  admit,  to  feed  and 
clothe  her  family  and  pay  the  rent  on  a  wage- 
rate  like  that,  and  she  was  near  to  going  under 
when  another  and  a  crowning  stroke  of  fortune 
fell.  In  answer  to  a  notice  tacked  on  her  door, 
two  women,  who  worked  in  a  neighboring 
book-bindery,  applied  for  board,  and  each 
agreed  to  pay  two  dollars  a  week.  The  five 
then  lived  together  in  the  basement-room, 
whose  furniture  consisted  chiefly  of  dry-goods 
boxes,  but  the  boarders  took  kindly  to  the 
home  and  the  children,  and  things  had  gone 
comfortably  ever  since.  Gradually  the  chil- 
dren, a  boy  of  nine  and  a  girl  two  years 
younger,  were  learning  to  help  at  some  of  the 
simpler  forms  of  sewing  and  in  the  house- 
work. 

This,  I  beg  to  interpolate,  was  the  small  be- 


173  INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS 

ginning  of  Mrs.  Stone's  success.  Having 
shrewdness  as  well  as  energy,  she  soon  discov- 
ered that  keeping  boarders  was  more  profitable 
than  making  waists,  and  so  she  developed  that 
side  of  her  enterprise.  When  I  saw  her  last, 
in  the  following  May,  she  was  mistress  of  a 
well-appointed  mechanics'  boarding-house  on 
Milwaukee  Avenue,  but  her  troubles  had 
taken  new  form,  for  the  contamination  of  the 
slums  had  begun  to  appear  in  her  son,  who  was 
fast  developing  into  an  incorrigible,  and  she 
had  sent  for  me  in  order  to  consult  about  a 
plan  of  placing  him  in  a  reformatory. 

But  to  return  to  the  February  evening,  on 
which  I  called  to  talk  with  Mrs.  Stone  about  a 
claim  upon  her  husband's  people:  I  found 
her  at  home.  One  ran  little  risk  of  failing  to 
find  Mrs.  Stone  at  home,  her  engagements 
abroad  being  confined  to  trips  to  the  sweater's 
shop  for  materials.  I  heard  the  swift  clatter 
of  her  sewing-machine  as  I  walked  down  the 
steps  from  the  filthy  pavement  to  the  door 
of  the  basement  where  she  lived.  The  room 
had  always  to  me  an  effect  of  being  brilliantly 
lighted.     It  was  due  to  the  illumination  of 


INCIDENTS  OP  THE  SLUMS  173 

two  large  lamps  which  were  kept  faultlessly 
clean  and  were  burning  often  in  the  day  as 
well  as  night,  and  in  part  to  the  general  clean- 
liness of  the  room,  not  to  mention  the  cheerful- 
ness which  radiated  from  Mrs.  Stone.  She 
turned  from  her  machine  as  I  drew  up  an 
empty  soap-box  and  sat  down  in  front  of  her, 
and  one  would  have  thought,  from  the  conta- 
gion of  her  manner,  that  she  never  knew  any 
mood  but  one  of  hopeful  courage.  But  she 
had  no  time  to  spare,  and  when  our  talk  was 
ended,  she  turned  again  to  work,  while  I  went 
over  to  another  comer  and  chatted  with  the 
children  and  the  boarders. 

I  was  waiting  for  my  friend  Kovnitz,  whom 
I  had  asked  to  meet  me  there.  Kovnitz  was 
himself  employed  in  the  same  trade  as  Mrs. 
Stone,  although  in  quite  another  branch  of  it. 
He  was  a  coatmaker,  and  had  been  brought  up 
to  work  under  the  sweating  system.  Much  of 
the  value  of  his  acquaintance,  apart  from  my 
personal  liking  for  him,  lay  for  me  in  his 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  trade.  He  was  a 
socialist,  and  a  very  ardent  one ;  but  his  efforts 
for  reform  were  directed  mainly  toward  effect- 


174  INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS 

ing  organization  among  the  workers  of  his 
kind,  and  with  this  I  warmly  sympathized. 
We  were  to  go  together  in  the  evening  to  a 
gathering  of  the  cloak-makers,  and,  when  he 
appeared  at  Mrs.  Stone's,  we  lost  no  time  in 
starting  for  the  meeting-place  on  the  South- 
side. 

One  was  never  at  a  loss  for  conversation 
with  Kovnitz,  but  it  was  always  conversation 
which  had  to  do  with  the  condition  of  his  class. 
That  was  uppermost  and  foremost  in  his  mind. 
Other  things  interested  him  only  as  they  were 
related  to  that.  Although  a  coUectivist,  he 
wasted  little  thought  upon  a  future  socialistic 
state,  and  he  cared  little  for  present  concerted 
political  action  in  his  party.  The  one  su- 
preme necessity,  in  his  view,  was  that  all  wage- 
earners  should  be  led  to  act  together  as  a  class, 
until  their  predominance  in  an  industrial  age 
is  recognized.  When  once  wage-workers  are 
known  to  be  the  most  powerful  as  a  class,  then 
social  institutions  will  change  in  accordance 
with  their  interests.  It  was  curious  to  see 
how  this,  the  central  principle  of  his  creed,  ab- 
sorbed him.     It  was  the  criterion  of  all  his 


INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS  175 

judgments,  and  it  gave  color  and  meaning  to 
everything  he  saw.  Generally  he  noticed 
little  of  what  was  about  him.  The  inferno  of 
those  city  streets  at  night  seemed  not  to  im- 
press him  as  we  passed.  All  the  varied  play 
of  life  upon  them  did  not  divert  him  from  pre- 
occupation in  what  he  was  telling  me  of  the 
work  of  organization  among  wage-earners. 
Once  only  his  attention  was  drawn  off,  and 
even  then  his  habitual  cast  of  thought  moulded 
the  new  impression.  In  glancing  up,  his  eyes 
had  fallen  upon  a  building  newly  occupied  as 
a  department  store.  It  was  Saturday  evening, 
and,  for  some  reason,  the  place  was  still  open. 
Streams  of  shoppers  were  entering  the  doors 
and  pouring  from  them.  More  even  than  by 
day,  the  store  gave  at  night  an  impression  of 
a  bee-hive  in  full  activity.  The  swarming  of 
the  crowds  within,  the  lights  from  a  hundred 
windows,  and  the  brave  array  of  goods  formed 
the  outer  picture.  But  Kovnitz  said  nothing 
of  that. 

"  There  are  two  men  in  that  store  who  are  as 
different  in  general  character  as  men  can  be," 
he  remarked  to  me,  as  we  stood  at  the  curb. 


176  INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS 

"  One  of  them,"  he  went  on,  "  is  a  man  of 
scholarly  instincts.  He  is  a  disciple  of  Kant, 
and  knows  the  Kantian  philosophy  well.  Just 
now  he  is  giving  his  leisure  to  reading  Goethe. 
He  is  an  enthusiast  in  philosophy  and  litera- 
ture, and  a  man  of  really  fine  sensibilities. 
The  other  chap  is  a  human  brute,  and  looks  it. 
Nothing  interests  him  beyond  his  business  and 
his  dissipations.  Both  of  these  men  are  at 
the  head  of  departments  of  ready-made  gar- 
ments in  the  store,  and  I  know  that  they  both 
draw  salaries  of  $4,000  a  year.  They  have 
good  business  heads,  and  manage  their  depart- 
ments well,  but  what  makes  them  specially  val- 
uable to  their  employers  is  the  fact  that  they 
know  thoroughly  the  sweating  system.  They 
keep  carefully  informed  on  the  condition  of 
the  labor  market,  and  the  demand  for  work; 
and,  when  the  competition  is  keenest  among 
the  sub-contractors  and  the  workers,  they  know 
how  to  pit  the  bidders  against  one  another, 
until  the  tasks  are  finally  let  out  at  the  low- 
est possible  figures.  Mrs.  Stone  is  making 
boys'  waists  for  thirty-five  cents  a  dozen,  and 
there  are  more  than  20,000  sweatshops  in  Chi- 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  177 

cago  where  similar  prices  prevail,  and  Chicago 
is  but  one  of  a  score  of  cities  in  this  country 
where  sweating  is  in  vogue." 

Late  that  night,  after  the  labor  meeting,  I 
was  passing  the  store  again.  I  was  alone,  for 
Kjovnitz  had  gone  home  another  way.  The 
street  lay  quiet,  and  almost  deserted  through 
its  length,  and  I  could  hear  the  echo  of  my 
tread  under  the  glare  of  electrics.  The  sound 
of  jangling  music  came  faintly  from  a  long 
line  of  almost  continuous  saloons.  There  was 
some  movement  in  front  of  them  which  con- 
trasted sharply  with  the  general  desertion  of 
the  street. 

One  is  rarely  at  a  loss  to  trace  the  anteced- 
ents of  a  sharp  impression,  and  I  can  remem- 
ber clearly  that  I  was  conscious  of  a  man  and 
woman  who  stood  talking  in  low  tones  as  I 
passed,  and  who  disappeared  that  moment  into 
an  open  passage.  The  next  instant  I  was 
keenly  alive  to  them,  for  I  heard  the  woman 
scream  as  though  in  mortal  fear,  and  turn- 
ing, I  saw  the  man  dragging  her  violently  out 
upon  the  pavement.  Events  followed  one  an- 
other then  in  quick  succession.     I  was  near 


178  INCIDENTS   OF   THE  SLUMS 

enough  to  watch  them  at  close  range,  and  I  had 
the  sense  of  interpreting  them  as  they  moved. 
I  saw  the  instant  flash  of  anger  in  the  face  of  a 
young  mechanic  who  stood  near,  and  the  first 
quick  thrust  of  his  arm  which  sent  the  man 
reeling  from  the  girl,  then  the  swift  onslaught 
of  the  two  men,  and  I  heard  the  rain  of  blows 
and  oaths,  and  the  loud  asseverations  of  the  one 
attacked  that  he  was  an  ofiicer,  while  the 
crowd  thickened  about  them,  and  the  girl 
pleaded  piteously  to  be  loosed  from  the  grasp 
of  someone  who  held  her. 

Two  officers  in  uniform  came  down  upon  us 
from  opposite  quarters,  and  the  fighting  gave 
way  to  noisy  explanations.  It  developed  then 
that  the  attack  had  been  made  upon  an  officer 
in  citizens'  clothes  who  was  doing  detective 
duty  against  street-walkers.  But  he  was 
wholly  to  blame  for  the  disturbance,  I 
thought;  for  he  had  handled  his  prisoner  with 
needless  violence,  and  the  blow  from  the  me- 
chanic was  so  obviously  the  instinctive,  chival- 
rous act  of  a  man  who  sees  a  woman  ill-treated. 
Technically,  however,  he  was  guilty  of  "  re- 
sisting an  officer  while  in  the  discharge  of  his 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  179 

duty,"  and  he  must  answer  for  it,  so  that  the 
group  which  started  for  the  Harrison  Street 
Station-house  was  made  up  of  the  three  offi- 
cers, the  girl,  the  mechanic,  and  four  or  five 
stragglers,  of  whom  I  was  one. 

It  was  easy  to  learn  at  the  station  what 
course  the  case  had  taken.  Both  prisoners 
were  admitted  to  bail,  and  bondsmen  having 
been  found,  they  went  free  that  night  under  a 
charge  to  appear  before  the  court  on  a  certain 
morning  of  the  following  week.  When  the 
morning  came  I  was  on  hand  too,  for  by  that 
time  I  had  given  up  my  job  in  the  factory. 

I  went  early,  not  knowing  at  what  hour  the 
case  might  come  up,  and;  although  there  were 
already  many  persons  seated  on  the  wooden 
forms,  I  looked  carefully  through  both  of  the 
court-rooms  without  seeing  those  in  whom  my 
interest  lay.  Finding  a  vacant  seat  in  the 
inner  room,  I  sat  there,  watching  intently  the 
changing  groups  at  the  bar.  They  were  made 
up  of  the  commonest  criminals  of  the  town, 
and  it  was  rare  that  a  novice  appeared  to  dis- 
turb the  atmosphere  of  perfect  naturalness. 
Law-breakers  they  were  without  question ;  the 


180  INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS 

magistrate  knew  tliem  as  well  as  the  police, 
and  frequently  he  spoke  to  them  by  familiar 
names,  reminding  them  of  earlier  warnings 
and  threatening  them  with  severer  penalties 
for  the  future.  It  was  a  sort  of  clearing-house, 
where  a  certain  residuum  of  habitual  criminals 
was  dealt  with  by  a  doctrine  of  averages  in  an 
effort  to  regulate  and  control  the  crime  in- 
evitable in  a  great  city. 

Sitting  beside  me  on  the  form  was  a  young 
girl,  plainly  dressed,  with  an  air  of  perfect 
neatness.  Her  gloved  hands  lay  folded  in  her 
lap  and  in  one  of  them  she  held  a  purse.  Her 
mackintosh  of  dark  material  was  unbuttoned 
and  thrown  open,  with  the  cape  falling  loosely 
over  her  arms.  It  was  the  trimness  of  her  hair 
and  a  certain  trig  simplicity  in  her  hat 
which  struck  me  first,  and,  when  she  spoke, 
the  tone  and  manner  were  in  keeping  with  her 
quietness  of  dress. 

"  Will  you  tell  me,  please,  what  time  it  is?  " 
she  asked,  and,  having  learned  the  hour, 
"  What  are  you  up  for? "  she  continued, 
abruptly. 

There  was  nothing  about  her  which  had  in 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  181 

the  least  prepared  me  for  the  question,  and  I 
floundered  about  in  an  explanation  that  I  was 
there  merely  out  of  interest  in  a  case  which  I 
expected  to  come  up  in  the  course  of  the  morn- 
ing. 

She  smiled  wearily  at  that,  regarding  me 
with  eyes  which  asked  whether  I  knew  how 
young  I  was  and  how  dreary  that  sort  of  thing 
made  her  feel.  I  was  afraid  that  I  had  cut 
short  the  conversation  and  was  delighted  when 
she  continued,  quite  simply: 

"  Fm  up  for  shop-lifting.  It  was  at  Walk- 
er's, and  it  was  the  hardest  luck,  for  I  had 
everything  well  concealed.  But  they  sus- 
pected me,  and,  when  they  brought  me  here, 
the  matron  searched  me  and  soon  found  the 
goods.  And  there  I  was,  red-handed!  Now 
I'm  trying  to  think  up  some  story,  but  the 
judge  knows  me  and  he  warned  me  well  last 
time." 

It  was  charming  then,  for  we  fell  to  talking 
as  though  we  had  known  each  other  long. 
Her  small  gray  eyes  that  looked  straight  into 
mine  were  as  frank  and  innocent  as  a  child's. 
There  was  Jittl^  beauty  but  an  entire  com- 


182  INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS 

posure  in  the  lines  of  her  face,  heightened  by 
a  natural  pallor  very  becoming  to  her.  Her 
features  betrayed  no  nervousness,  and  one  saw 
the  change  of  feeling  only  in  her  eyes  and  in  a 
subtle  quality  in  her  smile  which  was  expres- 
sive and  sometimes  sweet. 

We  were  two  children,  who  had  met  by 
chance,  and,  sitting  there  in  the  dingy  light  of 
a  station-house  court-room,  we  were  presently 
unaware  of  anything  but  the  fact  that  we  had 
a  great  deal  to  tell  each  other.  I  told  her  of 
the  mechanic  and  the  girl,  and  she  half  be- 
lieved me,  and,  in  turn,  began  to  tell  me  of 
herself.  There  was  no  system  in  her  story, 
only  a  simple  sequence  of  spontaneity  that 
charmed  me.  I  had  but  to  listen  and  watch 
her  inscrutable  face  and  ask  questions  where 
my  dull  intuitions  were  at  fault.  In  the  fore- 
ground was  the  incident  of  shop-lifting,  and 
running  from  that  was  a  chain  of  events  which 
led  back  inevitably  into  the  distant  perspective 
of  memory.  She  had  never  an  air  of  giving 
me  her  confidence,  rather  of  speaking  freely 
as  man  to  man. 

It  was  bad  to  be  caught  at  shop-lifting,  and 


INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS  183 

the  more  annoying  because  she  had  so  often 
carried  it  off  with  success.  At  the  best,  shop- 
lifting was  a  wretched  business,  entailing 
much  anxiety  both  in  getting  and  disposing  of 
the  goods.  But  there  was  the  stubborn  fact 
that  one  must  live.  Of  course  she  had  worked 
as  a  shop-girl  earning  $3.50  a  week.  And 
here  she  began  to  count  up  on  her  fingers  the 
items  of  bare  subsistence  with  their  cost,  and 
the  smile  with  which  she  concluded  was 
touched  with  the  question,  "  When  you  have 
spent  your  all  upon  mere  living,  what  have 
you  left  to  live  on?  "  There  had  been  some- 
thing of  this  idea  in  her  protest  to  her  em- 
ployer, and  he  met  her  frankly  with  the  assur- 
ance that,  if  she  found  it  impossible  to  live  on 
her  wages,  it  would  give  him  pleasure  to  intro- 
duce her  to  a  "  gentleman  friend."  Other 
employments  which  were  open  to  her  were  no 
better  in  point  of  wages;  some  of  them  were 
not  so  good,  but  they  were  all  alike  in  offering 
relief  by  the  way  suggested  at  the  department 
store. 

"  Fm  not  what  you'd  call  a  *  good  girl,'  "  she 
said,  "  only,  you  know,  I'd  so  much  rather 
die  than  do  that." 


184  INCIDENTS   OF   THE   SLUMS 

And  the  revulsion  of  the  child's  nature 
against  what  to  her  was  this  infinite  terror  led 
her  to  tell  me  of  her  bringing  up.  Her  mem- 
ory did  not  go  back  to  the  beginning  of  her 
stay  in  a  convent  near  Dublin,  where  her  par- 
ents placed  her  to  be  taught.  Life  had  begun 
for  her  in  the  peaceful  routine  of  the  sister- 
hood. All  her  deepest  impressions  were  got 
there,  and,  when  as  a  child  of  twelve,  she  came 
out  to  emigrate  with  her  people  to  America, 
she  was  instantly  in  a  new  world  on  leaving  the 
convent  walls.  It  had  been  an  almost  over- 
whelming discovery  to  her  to  find  that  the 
standards  of  goodness  and  purity  which  pre- 
vailed within  were  apparently  almost  unknown 
outside  the  convent.  It  staggered  her  intel- 
ligence as  a  child,  and,  during  a  long  experi- 
ence of  earning  her  living  as  a  girl,  she  had 
slowly  constructed  a  philosophy  of  life  which 
was  drawn  from  the  facts  of  hard  struggle 
with  a  world  which  seemed  bent  upon  com- 
passing her  ruin. 

She  spoke  reverently  of  the  teachings  of  the 
sisters,  and  of  the  influence  of  their  devoted 
work,     *'  But  you  know,"  she  added,  "  I  can- 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  186 

not  believe  any  longer  that  only  those  are 
Christians  who  are  members  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  that  all  others  will  be  lost.  The 
world  would  be  too  horrible,  if  that  were  true. 
To  be  a  Christian  must  be  simply  to  follow 
Christ." 

It  was  from  this  revery  that  we  were  roused 
by  the  loud  calling  of  her  name.  I  watched 
her  walk  to  the  bar  and  stand  there  with  per- 
fect composure,  while  the  clerk  read  the  in- 
dictment, and  the  witnesses  were  mechanically 
sworn,  and  the  girl  was  heard,  and  the  magis- 
trate gave  his  verdict. 

"  Minnie,"  he  said,  in  closing,  "  I  told  you, 
when  you  were  here  last,  that  the  next  time 
you  came  up,  you  should  go  to  the  Bridewell, 
and  now  to  the  Bridewell  you  shall  go.  Min- 
nie, why  can't  a  smart  girl  like  you  be 
decent? " 

Her  profile  was  toward  me,  and  I  saw  a 
faint  smile  play  for  a  moment  on  the  clear 
lines  of  her  face. 

"  Your  honor,"  she  replied,  "  it  is  a  little 
late  now,  but  when  I  began  to  earn  my  living 
I  wanted  nothing  so  much  as  the  chance  to  be 
decent." 


186  INCIDENTS  OF  THE   SLUMS 

Meanwhile,  two  reporters  were  quickly 
sketching  her  where  she  stood — a  singularly 
well-poised  figure — while  others  were  noting 
the  salient  facts  of  the  case;  for  it  was  a  good 
"  story,"  having  already  attracted  attention. 
"With  wide  notoriety  as  a  thief,  she  went  to 
prison  that  day,  and,  when  she  came  out,  a 
not  too  hospitable  world  was  the  more  on  its 
guard  against  her.  An  officer  accompanied 
her  from  the  room,  but  she  did  not  forget  to 
nod  to  me  and  smile  as  she  passed  out. 

Engrossed  as  I  had  been  in  Minnie,  I  had 
not  noticed  the  coming  of  the  mechanic  and 
the  girl  whose  case  had  drawn  me  there.  I 
saw  them  now  when  I  looked  around.  The 
sight  of  the  girl  was  perplexing  at  first,  for  she 
sat  with  another  woman  at  the  end  of  a  neigh- 
boring form,  and  they  looked  so  much  alike 
that  I  could  not  distinguish  the  one  who  was 
there  on  trial.  Crossing  the  passage,  I  asked 
leave  to  sit  beside  them.  They  drew  up  at 
once  to  make  room  for  me,  and  I  saw  then  that, 
the  girl  next  me  was  the  prisoner.  The  other 
was  a  twin  sister,  as  she  frankly  told  me,  and 
the  resemblance  fully  sustained  her.     I  ex- 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  187 

plained  that  I  had  come  to  the  station-house 
because  I  happened  to  see  the  affair  of  a  few 
nights  before,  and  was  anxious  to  find  what 
course  it  would  take  in  court.  The  girl  agreed 
with  me  that  the  mechanic  was  in  no  way  to 
blame. 

"  He  never  know'd  that  it  was  an  officer  that 
was  draggin'  me  down  the  steps,  and  out  into 
the  street.  I  never  know'd  it  neither  till  I  see 
his  star  under  his  coat.  I  thought  he  was 
crazy,  and  was  goin'  to  kill  me  like  '  Jack 
the  Ripper.' "  She  was  a  girl  in  age,  and 
obviously  one  of  the  most  helpless  of  her 
order. 

There  is  a  common  impression  that  such 
women  are  attracted  to  their  ruin  by  vanity 
and  a  love  of  dress.  You  lose  that  idea  among 
the  wrecks  who  walk  the  city  streets  at  night. 
Anything  to  flatter  their  vanity  or  to  gratify 
their  taste  is  the  least  likely  of  all  pos^ble 
experiences  to  most  of  them.  It  is  a  matter 
of  keeping  soul  and  body  together.  Some  are 
dexterous  pick-pockets,  who  make  large  hauls 
at  times — not  always,  however,  for  them- 
selves; most  are  ill-fed,  ill-dressed  slaves,  who, 


188  INCIDENTS   OF  THE   SLUMS 

when  their  tributes  are  paid,  are  penniless. 
Any  degree  of  viciousness  may  be  found 
among  them,  and  you  may  find  as  well  a  high 
degree  of  the  innocence  of  the  unmoral,  the 
sense  of  morality  completely  lost  in  the  in- 
stinct of  self-preservation. 

The  girl  beside  me  was  like  fragile  porce- 
lain, her  thin  lips  and  nostrils  and  delicate  skin 
all  marred  by  a  pasty,  white  unwholesomeness. 
There  was  a  hectic  flush  in  her  sister's  face  and 
her  eyes  were  ablaze  with  disease.  We  were 
talking  about  the  case  and  drifted  naturally 
into  further  talk  about  themselves.  They 
were  orphans  and  had  long  supported  them- 
selves by  working  in  a  tobacco  factory,  but 
there  their  health  had  failed,  and  when  they 
were  well  enough  to  work  again,  they  found 
employment  in  a  laundry.  To  supplement 
the  "  sweating  "  wages,  they  had  taken  to 
street-walking,  and  then  their  end  was  near. 
But  they  spoke  as  frankly  of  this  last  as  a 
"  business  "  as  of  the  earlier  occupations,  and 
you  saw  that,  to  their  thinking,  it  was  only 
a  degree  more  complete  a  sale  of  soul  and 
body. 


INCIDENTS  OF  THE  SLUMS  189 

"  But  business  is  poor,"  the  ill  sister  was 
saying,  presently,  "  and  I  ain't  very  well, 
which  I  wouldn't  mind,  but  there's  my  baby, 
and,  if  anything  happens  to  me,  who's  goin'  to 
take  care  of  him?  You  don't  think  I've  got 
consumption,  do  you? "  And  she  turned 
upon  me  a  face  with  the  cheeks  sunk  to  the 
bone  and  the  eyes  dilating  with  the  fire  which 
was  burning  out  her  life. 

"WTien  our  case  came  up,  it  went  through 
without  a  hitch.  The  officer  told  his  story 
with  a  pompousness  that  was  due  to  wounded 
pride  and  he  dwelt  over-much  upon  his  efforts 
to  make  his  assailant  understand  from  the  first 
that  he  himself  was  a  member  of  the  force. 
The  girl  was  simplicity  and  frankness  itself; 
not  an  effort  to  conceal  her  character,  but  a 
straightforwardness  about  the  officer's  brutal 
roughness  which  threw  it  into  strong  relief. 
But  the  young  mechanic  was  the  best.  He 
was  new  to  courts  as  he  abundantly  proved, 
and  when  his  turn  came  to  testify,  he  stood 
licking  his  dry  lips  like  one  with  stage-fright. 
Speech  came  haltingly  from  him  at  the  first, 
while  his  face  flushed,  but  the  sense  of  injustice 


190  INCIDENTS   OF  THE   SLUMS 

urged  him  on  to  a  perfectly  clear  statement  of 
how,  while  "  doing  the  town,"  he  had  seen 
this  girl  ill-treated  and  had  struck  the  man 
without  knowing  that  he  was  an  officer. 

I  knew  that  all  was  well,  for  I  saw  a  smile 
pass  vaguely  now  and  then  over  the  magis- 
trate's face,  and  when  he  spoke,  the  girl  was 
dismissed  with  a  fine  and  the  young  mechanic 
with  a  friendly  warning  against  "  doing 
the  town,"  while  the  officer  was  held  up 
in  open  court  for  reproof  and  told  that,  if 
he  knew  no  better  how  to  handle  his  prison- 
ers, he  was  ignorant  of  the  first  principles 
of  the  special  service  to  which  he  had  been 
assigned. 

It  is  only  a  few  steps  from  the  station-house 
to  the  heart  of  the  business  section  of  the  city. 
I  passed  through  it  now,  as  I  often  did,  for 
the  sake  of  the  feeling  that  it  gives  one  of  the 
reach  and  strength  of  the  industrial  forces 
which  are  centred  there.  Here  is  no  sense  of 
failure  or  of  loss,  but  of  energy  and  skill 
trained  to  high  efficiency  in  the  co-operation 
of  productive  powers.  Men  are  there  produc- 
ing for  all  mankind,  and  in  spite  of  the  pres- 


INCIDENTS   OF  THE  SLUMS  191 

ent  waste  of  human  life,  I  cannot  doubt  that, 
with  the  problems  of  production  so  widely 
solved,  the  genius  of  the  race  is  turning 
surely  to  the  subtler  questions  of  a  fairer 
distribution. 


r^ 


^^l-B  — W91 


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SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LiBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

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3  1210  00717  2396 


